


In the looking glass

by andeemae



Series: On the other side [2]
Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: District 12, F/M, during the quarter quell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-22 15:01:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 34,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4839818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andeemae/pseuds/andeemae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Madge continues to stumble down an unknown path, and it only gets more twisted the further she goes. Sequel to 'Down the Rabbit Hole'</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine.
> 
> AN: This is the sequel to 'Down the Rabbit Hole'. Many thanks to FortuneFaded2012 for beta'ing for me.

Madge wishes the Victory Tour had never happened.

The disaster in District Eleven had been edited to nothing, barely a whole half hour of television in total. Then it had become monotonous.

She'd caught a glimpse of District Ten and Nine, dressed in all reds, yellows, and oranges, a human wall of fire in the blazing sun, and Madge wondered if the clearly unfocused Peeta and Katniss had even noticed the show of solidarity

The rest, other than the Career Districts, save Four, were predictable. Happy to see the Victors, rambunctious, but cautious enough not to repeat Eleven's mistake.

It wasn't promising for District Twelve's two newest Victors. The spark their act of rebellion, whether calculated or not, had started, was beginning to burn a little too brightly, a little too hot. Madge had only the barest information, but she worried that Katniss' months long lack of interaction with Peeta wasn't going to help convince the people in charge, those watching her every move, that it was simply overwhelming love that lead her to that path.

It kept her up at night, and she prayed either one or both of them would realize what they may have started. Madge wished she'd noticed the signs before. Noticed that Peeta was only ever with his brothers and that Katniss would disappear into the woods, something she and Gale should have known not to do. Their vanishing into the woods, even alone, bred rumors that barely needed legs, rumors that might not be rumors as far as anyone in the District was concerned.

Even though Madge had let her own curiosity about what existed outside the fence get to her, had Katniss take her out in the woods a couple of times and quickly known it was a terrible mistake.

It was damp and cool under the canopy of the ancient trees as Madge trailed behind Katniss, step for step, keeping up with her.

"Stop making that noise," she'd told Madge each time she flinched and squeaked after hearing a bird or wild creature scurry away.

It was impossible though. There were too many noises, too many new smells and shadows lurking around her. Each animal Madge watched Katniss kill, which she suspected was far fewer than when Madge was not underfoot, made her pale a little.

"This is for Gale's family," she explained as she tucked a rabbit, a glass-eyed little creature, into her bag.

"He'll take it?" Madge remembered, the moment the words passed her lips, who she was talking to. Of course Gale would accept Katniss' gifts. She was Katniss.

A small smile flickered up Katniss' lips, "Why wouldn't he?"

Madge bit back telling her about the chocolate she'd gifted to Vick and Rory, about the little spat she and Gale had in the cafeteria over it. Katniss wouldn't understand even if she had, might even have taken up for him. They came from the same place after all.

"It's amazing," Katniss smiled, genuinely smiled up at the bits of blue sky peeking out from behind the roof of leaves overhead. "Isn't it?"

Though she hadn't thought so, the woods were terrifying, Madge simply nodded.

Unlike Katniss and Gale, Madge didn't see any wonder in the trees. The woods were dark and empty, but at the same time full of danger, more things that could kill her. Perhaps, she thought, that was the draw of it to the other two; maybe they thrived on the danger of it, the supposed freedom. It bound them together.

There was no freedom in it though. Madge could sense the eyes on her, the ever present gaze of the Capitol trained on her, carving out holes in her back as they watched her from some distant room.

Despite what Katniss and Gale believed, the woods weren't a safe haven, they were a snare set and waiting to trap them, and Madge had the terrible feeling, as she watched the Victory Tour drag on, that it might have already caught them.

"Be careful, Madgie. Eyes open, pay attention."

Madge had let herself be blind to the disaster that was brewing right under her nose.

Katniss seemed to be trying, almost desperately to Madge, to make up for the missed months with Peeta. A false smile everytime she appeared on the television. It was probably too little too late though. While the tittering crowds in the Capitol might buy her doe eyes and kisses, Madge knew the people that mattered had probably already seen the signs, knew it was as much an act as the programs that filled the Capitol airways. The only hope Madge could find was that, like with the rule change, the crowds insistence on having their 'Star-crossed lovers' would keep everyone safe. Or at least give them time to find a way to crawl out of the way of whatever the shadowy figures in charge had planned.

Her father had already been on edge. He'd been given stipulations, impossible to hold to, but that, he told her was the point.

"Probably get a new Head Peacekeeper," he'd sighed. Cray and his useless band were under just as much scrutiny as the Mayor it seemed.

His television had blared a warning cry, telling all the District officials about the uprising in Eight.

Every few hours it would go off, scream, and terrify her mother. They'd show another suspected rebel executed on live television, a bloody caution to those in the uprising, though it seemed to only add fuel to the fire. The troop presence appearedto grow with each broadcast, an indication that the Capitol was losing control.

The tones became less blaring after the first day, settled into a beep, but it still wore at her and her mother's nerves.

"Can't he stop that?" She'd asked Madge. "It just wears on my head."

Madge felt terribly for her. The television in her father's study was too close to their room and the noise was probably more than overwhelming to her already worn mother. Her morphling supply had been diminished. The nebulous 'they' that supplied it from the Capitol told them there was a shortage at the lab that created the substance. Madge had the sinking suspicion, though, that this was simply one more jab at their weary District for producing the 'Star Crossed Lovers' that were being such a nuisance.

Even Madge's piano was too much noise for her mother's head to take at times, without the morphling to dull her senses.

The only bright side had been that her mother was more focused, no longer in her continual haze of forgetfulness and confusion. At one point, she even managed to carry on a conversation with Katniss without sounding like a lunatic or dissolving into tears. Madge almost called it a blessing in disguise.

She was relieved when the Victory Tour finally ended and Katniss and Peeta were to come home. Until the proposal blindsided them all.

The dark and crooked path they had been set on all those months ago had just gotten a little more twisted, and much darker.

#######

"So Katniss is going to marry Peeta?"

Vick sits at the counter. Over the past few months he'd grown like the weeds in Madge's now overrun garden. Despite being only just now ten, he's easily at her shoulder, though he's still painfully thin.

Madge just nods.

The proposal should have shocked no one. It was the only logical next step in the Game. Yet somehow it seemed to have caught much of the District, Katniss' friends and family, off guard.

They have to keep playing the Game, though, in whatever way would keep them and their families safe. Madge also knows, though it's never said, that the District itself is at stake.

Her father stays later and later at the Justice Building. More and more new Peacekeepers are trickling in, replacing older, more complacent ones. Things are tense, like a wire pulled to the load weight. Taut, ready to snap at any moment, and woe betide is the person that adds the final stone to the bucket.

"Do-do you think she wants to?" Vick's innocent eyes flicker up to her, "Do you think she loves him?"

Madge bites her lip.

Truthfully, no, she doesn't. Katniss probably has never given marriage much consideration, especially not to Peeta. As for loving him…she feels, hopes, Katniss cares for Peeta, at least in some manner, however that may be.

"I think she cares about him, very much. In her own way."

They'd survived a horrible experience together, they had a connection. She has to care about him at least a little.

It doesn't matter though. They are all dependant on Katniss and Peeta's relationship, whatever the nature. Without it, things will only get worse. Judging by the current state of things, though, the Capitol, those in charge, aren't buying into the continued love story. It's a romance destined to have a tragic ending, just like their namesake.

Vick turns the cup of hot chocolate in his hands, staring at it. His voice is low, just a breathy whisper, "Do you think she loves Gale?"

Madge doesn't want to answer, but then, she really doesn't have to. Vick already has enough of the pieces to figure it out.

It takes several minutes, but Madge finally manages to get her voice to work, "I think he loves her."

Again it's just a breath, just barely audible, a mimic of Vick's.

Vick looks up and catches Madge's eyes. They stare at each other, across the kitchen island for a long moment before he sighs, "Guess I should get home."

She walks him to the fence, as is their routine, and he gives her a hug goodbye.

"Gale's gonna be in a bad mood again," he mutters into her shoulder. She gives him a little squeeze.

"I'm sorry." She pulls back, straightens his hair a little. "He's stressed. It isn't easy in the mines."

Vick pales a little and Madge has a sinking feeling in her stomach. The mines are his future as much as they're Gale's present. She pulls him back into a hug, a little tighter this time.

"I-Just don't be too hard on him. He's worried. He doesn't have time like he use to, to, you know, do things."

Like hunt and trap food. Like ensure you and your brother, sister, and mother don't freeze or starve to death.

She hates that she still defends him, still defends him and his sour attitude to his brother, but she can't stop herself. She feels the pull, the aching need to lessen his burden at any chance she gets.

Gale Hawthorne hasn't muttered much more than a thank you to her when dropping off strawberries for her father in the past few months, yet he still holds her heart in the palm of his rough hands.

Vick pulls back, gives her a small smile, a funny half thing. "See you tomorrow night."

Then he runs off for the Seam.

#######

The Harvest Festival is an awkward affair from start to finish.

Katniss had asked about the pin, which in itself wasn't awkward.Madge's feigned obliviousness to the meaning of the Mockingjay, however, was.

Only songbirds…she wished.

"They're miracles," her mother had sighed once, her empty eyes staring at the golden pin,"They're lucky."

Madge failed to see how an anomaly bornof rejection could be considered lucky, unless it was just lucky the Jabberjays had enough genetic similarities that the Mockingjays weren't sterile and so able to proliferate as they had.

"They shouldn't exist." Her father had explained.

"At least not in such numbers. When creatures like them reproduce, say you have a horse and a donkey, they mate, the offspring-a mule-is usually sterile. See? Mules are bred for, generally. These birds, though, they've taken off without human intervention. They shouldn't exist."

Like Katniss, Mockingjays shouldn't have survived. Unlike Katniss, they weren't causing the Capitol trouble.

Later, Madge wishes the Festival Dinner had all been carried out on the lawn, where she could avoid the heavy oddness that permeated her house during it.

Gale's family, being considered Katniss' family, had come of course. Gale should have had no choice but to sit in the Mayor's formal dining area and watch Katniss and Peeta seated side by side while he watched in all his surly and glowering glory, which wouldn't have been all that different than he normally is, at least in Madge's opinion. Yet, she'd hoped he'd at least put on a good front. There are more eyes watching than usual, after all, surely he would know that.

Gale isn't there though.

"He's sick," Vick tells her as he helps carry ice cream to the table.

It's probably a lie, but Madge doesn't question it. He deserves a little peace, or at least someone does.

At the dinner there are reporters and distinguished guests, not the same ones that had come during the Games, Madge wishes they were. These guests were more guarded, they don't give her tidbits of Capitol life as freely as the others had, though the information she'd gained from them hadn't always been useful. Copernicus' beloved designer's favorite food and Cordia's bizarre bathing rituals, though educational in their own way, weren't particularly helpful. The only thing she'd learned from the current group was that their music chips weren't up to date because of a shipping disruption and that they wished there was going to be seafood at the dinner because it had been absent from the Capitol due to a bad weather in Four.

Both are odd and seemingly unconnected, but with the battle being waged in Eight, she doubts that the reasons for their lack of their favorite luxuries has anything to do with weather or simple shipping disruptions.

She'd also hoped Birdy Alameda would be allowed back. The Victor was abrasive to a degree, but she was also kind, in her own strange way. She was also possibly homicidal. Madge had thought her suggestion to kill Gale during her first prepping of Katniss' mother and sister was a very odd kind of joke. After reading through her father's Capitol paper, though, and seeing that Plutarch Heavensbee, a man Birdy had mentioned in connection with the Games, had bought the apartment of the recently (and under what Madge felt was very odd circumstances) deceased Glaive siblings, Madge wasn't quite sure.

Vick and Rory have eaten everything placed in front of them. Madge's mother has been in a particularly good way, helping them spoon heaping servings of the odd foods brought straight from the Capitol for the Victors' enjoyment.

Madge picks at her dinner. She isn't particularly hungry so she listens to her surprisingly coherent mother talk to Mrs. Everdeen.

"You're looking so well these past few months, Matilda."

Her mother gives her an airy smile, "Haven't I?"

"Yes, I-You've been downstairs this whole evening, and Katniss says she's seen you up and around when she's been to visit Madge."

Her mother's pale hair is coming down, floating around her head as she nods, "Katniss? Your daughter? Yes, I've met her. She's a nice girl…Friends with Madge…Poor thing was trying to learn the piano, but it's been giving me a headache lately." She sighs, "Madge gave her May's pin, did you know? I didn't realize it until the other day. Saw it on her when she was on the television."

Madge blinks. Her mother hadn't said anything, which was odd. Madge had assumed she would be furious at her for gifting a family heirloom, her precious sister's pin. The way she was talking though, it was as if Madge had done nothing more interesting than hang a picture on the wall.

"Yes, Matilda, I knew."

Her mother gives Madge a faint smile and pats her arm before looking at Mrs. Hawthorne.

She lets her hazy gaze flicker between each of the Hawthorne children, the gears in her mind slowly turning. "Are you short one?"

Mrs. Hawthorne's brow crinkles a bit; her mouth turns down, "Yes, I am."

Madge's mother seems to contemplate the missing element for a second before sighing, "He reminds me of Haymitch."

Mr. Abernathy, seated next to her, makes a grunting noise, "Not even close, 'Tilda."

He gets up shortly after, disappearing from the bright lights of the dinner, probably to the wine cellar.

#######

"We seem to have lost Haymitch," her father sighs as the last of the guests are finally put to bed.

They want to be off as early as possible in the morning. The District simply doesn't agree with them.

"So much dust," they'd complained.

It took considerable self-control not to point out to them that digging in the ground created a rather large amount of dust. They probably wouldn't have understood her anyway as they seemed completely baffled by the thought of manual labor.

Madge sets out to find Mr. Abernathy. She assumes he's with Katniss, but the lone female Victor had apparently left earlier, according to Peeta as he put on his coat to walk his family home.

"Do you need help looking for him?"

She shakes her head, avoiding Mrs. Mellark's irritable stare and poor Mr. Mellark's forlorn frown. Peeta gives her an affectionate pat on the shoulder, and Emmer and Rhys offer a quick nod, before the Mellarks depart.

Madge checks the garden, the shed, the wine cellar -which is missing several bottles, and finally all the downstairs rooms. When she's finished the search of the upper guestrooms she decides to take off her shoes, they're killing her feet.

She's just crossed the threshold into her room when the overwhelming stench of liquor hits her.

"Mr. Abernathy!"

He's sprawled on the floor in front of her dresser, passed out drunk. Madge shakes her head. She'll have to get her father to help her drag him up, it certainly isn't the first time he's drank himself into a coma at their house. But seeing as the house is full of reporters and guest until the morning, she isn't sure where they're going to put him up for the night.

She's contemplating just leaving him there and sleeping on the little divan in her parents' room for the night, when she sees the top of a head on the other side of her bed. Dark hair, mussed and tussled, leaned back against her gray bedspread.

At first she thinks it's one of the guests, her heart stops at the thought, remembering the Glaives and their propensity for going through her things, then he leans back, his head resting on her bed, and she catches a glimpse of his face.

Gale.

Quickly she marches around the bed and looks down at him. He has the missing wine bottle, opened, in his hand.

"You missed the party." Madge frowns at him, confused at how he got to her room in the first place. He's friends with a couple of the older Peacekeepers, she supposes one of them might have let him in, or perhaps he's just that stealthy. He does regularly sneak into the woods; it wouldn't surprise her if he'd simply snuck in her house like he did into the land beyond the fence.

"Did you drink all that?" She asks him, a little horrified at him consuming so much alcohol.

"Haymitch drank it," he tells her flatly, tossing the bottle onto the floor at her feet.

Good…well, not good. Haymitch really ought not drink that much either. His liver can't be in the greatest shape at this point.

Madge squints down at him, he's a mess. His hair is uncombed and he's in a filthy, dingy shirt. His mother would be appalled, she's certain of it. Dull gray eyes flicker up and down her, take her in, "Pretty dress."

It's the same damned dress she'd worn the day of the Reaping. The day Prim's name was called and Katniss volunteered. The day their lives had changed. He'd said the same thing then and she'd hated him just a little for it.

She has no more control over her life, less really, than Katniss, yet she's the one bearing all his contempt. Heat rises up her face.

"How did you get in my room, Gale?"

He doesn't answer, just turns his eyes from her, back to her bookshelf and shrugs.

Looking around the room, she sees her curtains are wrinkled, obviously he'd come through the window.

"Why didn't you come to the dinner?" If he was going to bother breaking into her room he might as well have come and eaten, reaped the reward of having not just one but two winners.

His lip curls, "And watch the star-crossed lovers make eyes at each other? No thanks."

Her heart breaks a little for him. None of this has been easy, she knows that, watching the girl he's so clearly and painfully in love with fall farther and farther from his grasp.

It suddenly makes perfect sense why he's there. Even if he can't stomach watching the two supposed lovers over dinner, he can't stay completely away. Katniss has an invisible pull on him, she has no idea the effect she has on him, and it had drawn Gale from his self-imposed exile for the night.

Gale pushes himself up, stands by her bed and stretches. The bottom of his shirt is untucked and a little short for him and it raises up above the tops of his pants, exposing a small expanse of his stomach, every bit as olive as the rest of him. She catches a glimpse of dark hair, even.

Madge quickly pulls her eyes up, focuses on his face, tries to keep her own expression impassive as her heart thrums so hard in her chest she's positive he'll hear it.

"I'm a bit sick of them too," she admits quietly. The last thing her wounded heart needs is to be confronted, day in and day out, with a love story for the ages. Especially the love story that's causing the object of her affection so much distress.

He looks at her, as though he isn't sure of the words coming out of her mouth. His hand reaches up and grasps a strand of her hair that has escaped the golden ribbon, he twirls it in his fingers.

"She and Mellark are getting married." He leans in close, she can smell the last traces of whatever he'd eaten for dinner on his breath. Spicy and pungent, and she wonders if it's one of Katniss' rabbits. "Is that part of the Game, Undersee?"

It is. Madge just knows it is. It may be the only thing that saves them. She gives him a pained smile.

"Gale, we don't always get what we want. People make sacrifices."

"You think I haven't made enough sacrifices?" He snaps.

Madge takes a step back, uneasy with him. He might grab her. He's been rough with her before, even if he is contrite after. He seems to sense she's getting nervous and drops the strand of her hair, tucks it behind her ear.

Her heart cracks a little more.

"I'm sorry, Gale."

Sorry he can't get what he so desperately wants. Sorry he has to go into those horrible mines every day. Sorry he's spent his whole life starving. Sorry for his father. Sorry he's wishing she were someone else standing just a breath from his lips.

She's sorry for all the things in his life she has no control over.

"Bet you are," he practically growls.

That's it.

"Get out of my room, Gale." She crosses her arms over her chest in an attempt at appearing intimidating. Just because no girl has ever tossed him out of her room before doesn't mean it wasn't a long time coming, and Madge is glad to claim the title at the moment.

He's going to work himself up, get angry, and not only is her house the worst place to have that meltdown, she isn't in the mood to take his abuse. He's been ignoring her for months, just because he's in a mood doesn't mean he could come back to her and cry his heart out on her shoulder.

No matter how much she wanted to provide that shoulder.

He brushes past her, over to her window, pulling it open and crawling through.

"You should lock your window," he tells her gruffly, not even bothering to look back at her as he clambers down the shingles, to the edge of the roof before jumping to the ground below.

She starts to call out that like the doors in her house, the windows have no locks, but she decides that's probably not information she wants to broadcast to him and whoever happens to be near her house during the darkest part of the night.

He disappears from her view, swallowed up in the darkness of the small hours of the night without so much as a wave goodbye.

"Your friend's cousin is a real gentleman, huh, Pearl?"

Madge glares at Mr. Abernathy.

"Have you been awake this whole time?"

He chuckles and rolls himself face up, grinning at her.

"I should pour a bucket of cold water on you," she tells him as she helps him set up. Heis still drunk after all. He wraps an arm around her shoulders and she tugs him into standing.

"You're too sweet for that," he chuckles. "Otherwise you'd've slapped the crap outta dear cousin when he started playing with your hair."

She has half a mind to knock him down the stairs as she helps him into the hallway, but doesn't. She doesn't have the upper body strength to drag his dead body into the garden to hide it.

Her mother appears, she's changed into her nightgown. Mr. Abernathy tries to right himself a little, appear less like the inebriated man he is.

"'Tilda."

She eyes him a little sadly, "Haymitch." Her hazy eyes flicker behind him, to Madge. "Why were you in Madge's room?"

"Passed out." He tells her, as if that explains it all, and really it does. Haymitch is notorious for passing out in all kinds of strange places. They'd found him under the kitchen sink once, when they'd thought they had him secured in one of the downstairs guestrooms.

She blinks at him, gives him a sad sort of smile, then kisses his cheek, "Get home safely, Haymitch."

Her hand trails down his arm, her fingers linger at his wrist for a second. Then she glides off.

Madge is glad they're on better terms. The 50th Quarter Quell had broken them both so badly, and only the two of them really understood just how badly that really was. They'd mended ways, as much as a drunk and a veritable drug addict were capable of doing, over the many years since Madge had been very small.

Haymitch rubs his cheek and mutters about 'mad women' before leaning back onto Madge.

When she gets him outside he stands on his own, perfectly steady.

"Why did you make me help you if you could do it yourself?"

He grins, his grizzled face creasing with premature lines, "To see if you would."

She always did, and he knew it. It drives her a bit crazy, how he and her father are constantly testing her.

"You watch yourself," he squints off in the direction of the Seam. "That cousin is trouble."

He takes her by the shoulders, pulls her into an awkward hug. She can smell his harsh breath, feel the scratch of his unshaven, scraggly cheek, as he whispers, "I mean it, sweetheart, he's no good for you. He and that girl, they're more trouble than you need, you hear me? Understand?"

"You just don't want me to upset Katniss," she whispers back.

He shouldn't worry about that. She doesn't want to hurt her friend. Whether Katniss loves Gale as simply a friend or more, Madge knows he's off limits to her.

Besides, he hates her.

"I don't want you getting your heart broken."

She doesn't expect that, for him to be concerned with her emotional well being.

In a fit of affection she kisses his cheek, as her mother had done. "Don't worry, I won't."

Because it had already been broken months ago.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine.
> 
> AN: Again, many thanks to FortuneFaded2012 for beta'ing.

Madge has hardly stepped out the doors of the library, when another cool gust hits her. It cuts through her skirt. She glances up at the cold gray sky, a storm is coming up, she can smell it in the air. She'd only come out to pick up a book on the history of candy making for her mother and one on wiring for her father, otherwise she would be curled up in her bed, avoiding Mrs. Oberst and pretending to not exist. Taking a bracing breath, she adjusts the too big coat she had decided to wear. It's her mother's, one she had been given by Mr. Abernathy years ago when she and Madge had ventured to his house for his birthday ill dressed for the cool night air.

She's just finished wrapping it a little tighter at her waist when she hears it. There's a crowd gathered in the square, and while that wouldn't be unusual during scheduled viewing of the games, their presence is ominous and unusual at the moment.

They're in a state, frantic. Something is very wrong.

Did dad forget to tell me about an announcement? It isn't unthinkable. He's been increasingly distracted. The pressure from the Capitol, her mother's dwindling morphling supply, Katniss and Peeta, the uprisings, have all worn him thin. He forgets things that aren't necessary more and more, and more often than not those things concerned Madge.

Carefully, she weaves through the crowd until she can see what all the uproar is over.

At the center of the mob is a man, a Peacekeeper, Madge has never seen before. His hair is a more steely gray than Mrs. Oberst's, and is in a harsh, short cut. He's facing away from the crowd, back straight, shoulders stiff, and legs apart in a wide threatening stance. He, Madge can tell without so much of an introduction, is the new Head Peacekeeper her father had been worried about, and he is plainly not a man to be questioned.

In his hand is a length of leather, a little broader than her own thumb and just longer than her arm, but thick enough. A whip.

Her mother had told her once, that before Cray, whippings had been common. Madge has never seen one in her short life, though. It had never even been a distant possibility in her mind.

She watches, mesmerized, as the unfamiliar man's arm rises up, comes back down in a graceful, powerful arch.

It's only then that Madge remembers that for a whipping, there has to be a person to be whipped.

Another man, broad back bloodied and in ribbons of flesh, is tied by his wrists to a post. He hangs, bonelessly, his energy clearly ebbing, either passed out or nearing it.

Dark haired, olive skinned, obviously from the Seam…

Her heart stops. She drops the books into the dirty puddle at her feet.

No.

Time seems to freeze as the unknown Peacekeeper's arm comes down again and his whip meets Gale's skin. The crowd might be crying or cheering, they may be silent in shock, Madge doesn't know, she can only hear the hollow echo of the whip as it carves Gale's back into a lattice of bloody lace.

She urges her feet to move, her voice to cry out, to do something. But what can she do? She has no power, has less power than most even, at the moment. She isn't even a pawn in the Game; she's useless to Gale and everyone else.

Instead of stopping it, which she has no hope of doing, she watches, tries to force her eyes closed, but can't. All she can do is stare at the bloody display, the painful caution, as Gale inches closer and closer to death.

It happens so fast she almost doesn't even see it happen, doesn't realize it is happening.

Katniss is there. Unlike Madge, she isn't frozen in mute horror, she takes action. Though Madge still can't hear, can just barely see her friend as the crowd closes in, readying for the next grisly show, she knows what's going to happen.

While Madge isn't even a pawn, a worthless piece in the game, easily sacrificed for the greater good, Katniss is a queen. She's in great danger, but she'll only be sacrificed if absolutely necessary. Even if she's only just realizing it, Katniss the most powerful piece in this game.

In a part only she has the ability play, Katniss puts an end to it. She saves him.

And that's why you don't deserve him.

In a flurry of nerves and fear, once the spectacle is over and she's certain the now injured Katniss is going to be able to get Gale off that awful whipping post and get him to her mother, Madge turns on her heels and runs.

She flies, feet carrying her faster than they've ever done. Then she's back at her house, bursting into it.

"What are you doing?" Mrs. Oberst hisses.

Madge looks down and sees she's tracked a trail of mud and gravel into the house. She doesn't care, though, what are angry housekeepers when a man could be dying?

With a look of utmost contempt she pushes past the fuming housekeeper, takes the stairs two at a time.

She falls through her parents' bedroom door, tipping over her own careless limbs, and finds her mother at the window, staring out in confusion.

"Madge, what happened in the square?" A small crease has formed between her eyes and her nose scrunches just the smallest bit.

"Mom, mom, please, I need you-I need your help," she grabs her by the shoulders, looks her square in the eyes. She has to see in Madge's eyes how deadly important this is.

She brings her hand to Madge's cheek, rubs it with her palm, "You're crying, love."

Madge runs her own hand over her face, and, sure enough, it comes off wet. She suddenly feels more hot tears come pouring out of her eyes.

"Mom, p-please, please, they've-they w-w-whipped him-m," she's crying so hard she can hardly breath. She starts to hiccup, can't even get his name out, just a garbled mess of saliva and tears and snot.

Her mother's eyes widen, she blinks before turning and walking to her bedside table. She opens the top drawer and pulls out a box, cardboard and battered looking.

"I've not always been a very good mother," she plucks one of the vials from the case and looks at it fondly. "We all have our failings, love."

With a thwap she shoves the vial back in the box before holding it out to Madge.

"Please don't get caught."

#######

The snow storm starts before she's even reached the Square.

It wraps her and blinds her. It conceals her. Another blessing in disguise, like the diminishing of her mother's morphling supply from the Capitol.

She barely registers the look of confusion on the occupants of Katniss' house before turning and running back to her own home.

As soon as she crosses the threshold Mrs. Oberst has her by the collar.

"Brat of a girl! Tracking mud all over my clean floor! Like some common urchin! When the boss gets home-"

She's building into a full blown tirade, bound to bring up every perceived sin Madge has ever committed against her, when someone places their hand on her shoulder.

"That'll be enough, Mrs. Oberst."

The steel haired old woman looks as though she'll die of shock. Madge's mother has never, not in the nearly twenty years she's served as the Mayor's housekeeper, told her that anything would be enough.

"I'll take care of my daughter."

She brushes past the old woman and takes Madge, soggy, filthy shoes and all, up the stairs and into the master bedroom. Madge watches her, still as ethereal as ever, still with her airy voice and glazed, hazy eyes, but she's more there than she'd been since Madge was very small.

"Get out of those wet clothes. Go take a warm bath. I'll get you something to wear."

#######

Whether her mother ever tells her father about the morphling or not, Madge never knows. They never speak of it. It may as well have been a dream, or a nightmare, more like.

They sequester themselves the next few days, holed up in the master bedroom.

Madge has a bit of a cold from her run, a small price to pay to ease Gale's suffering.

She wants desperately to go back, to check that he's making it okay, that her small mercy had given him the nudge he needed to live. She knows it isn't safe to do so. The Peacekeepers will be watching and seeing the Mayor's daughter running back and forth to the side of a known poacher, a tried and convicted criminal, and his believed to be treasonous 'cousin' would put the entire District at risk.

Even a trip to the Hawthornes' house in the Seam is out of the question, for much the same reason.

So she sits, waits, for what she isn't sure. She lets her anxiety eat her up from the inside as things get worse outside their home.

The mines close, people starve, children take out tesserae in droves, and people are punished for offenses so slight they've been forgotten. Food supplies are cut; Madge's father tells her he suspects it's partly due to actual shortage and partly as punishment for being the birthplace of the nuisance Victor. When the mines reopen, Madge is sickened to learn that the wages are being cut, a decree from the Capitol itself. Even worse, the men are sent to the less stable areas, all to supposedly make up for the weeks of lost coal. Madge knows better.

Not even the much anticipated Parcel Day brings any good tidings. All spoiled, eaten by rats.

As the days drag by Madge begins wondering how much more the District can take.

#######

When the snow clears from the ground, leaving a mess of mud and soggy vegetation, Vick turns up once more.

She'd gone out to the square, seen the whipping post and gallows and stockades her father had told her had been put in place along with guns. Her eyes had flittered, of their own volition, to the patch of ground that had been splattered in Gale's blood, but it was gone. Swallowed up by the ground and melting snow.

"In Ten," her father had told her in the green glow of the little bug detecting compact she'd become so fond of, it was a permanent fixture in her bedroom, "stockades are used daily. Hangings are almost as common."

He'd never thought it would come to that in Twelve, hadn't either. Things were bad enough in the District, the thought that something as miserable as all that was coming to pass would come crashing onto their doorstep was too terrifying to imagine.

As she opens her back door, she finds Vick sitting at the counter, drinking hot chocolate with her mother.

He gives her a small little smile, his dimples just barely visible, and she forces one back at him.

She takes him up to her room, lets him bounce on her bed for a while, jump up and down, forget that his eldest brother is a bloody mess still. His mother apparently can't find work, Posy is just getting over the measles, and Rory has gone and signed up for tesserae.

It isn't until he stops jumping and laughing, runs to her and throws his skinny arms around her and tells her it'll be okay, that she even realizes she's crying. Hard.

"Shhhh, Madge, it's okay," he tells her soothingly.

It's stupid, because she's practically an adult and he's just a little boy, but he's comforting her. She sinks to the floor and pulls him to her side, sobbing into his hair.

"I'm-m s-s-s-sorry, V-v-vick!" She blubbers.

She hates herself for it. She's just one more weak Town girl. Like her mother when her sister died. Like Mrs. Everdeen when her husband died. Only no one had died on Madge. It only felt that way.

They stay sitting on the floor in their awkward hug for a long time, until the sun starts to sink and Madge knows Vick needs to get home. There's a curfew for him to worry about now.

#######

He's back the next day.

"Are you okay today?" He asks her, looking a little hesitant.

She gives him a brave nod. She can't fall apart on him; he has enough falling apart on him as it is.

They go up to her room again and she lets him pick out some books to take home to read to Posy while she's recuperating.

"Alice in Wonderland," she hands him the ragged looking book. "Read the first one then I'll give you the second one, alright?"

He nods and studies the book, the blonde on the front and the white rabbit.

"Madge? Can I ask you a question?"

It's odd, for him to ask permission for a question, he's never done it before and it makes her a little worried. She nods.

"Well, Katniss has to marry Peeta, right?" He looks at her and bites his lip.

She nods again.

He takes a few steps over, to the bed, and sets down, before looking at her again.

"Well, Rory and me, we talked about it, and well, Katniss, you said she likes Peeta well enough for her, for Katniss," he takes a deep breath and ponders over what he's about to say. "Well, if she's marrying Peeta then she can't marry Gale."

Vick's wide eyes stare at her, willing her to understand him, but she doesn't. Not in the slightest.

"No," she says carefully. "You can only marry one person at a time, Vick."

He nods solemnly.

She stares at him, still not sure what he's getting at.

His eyes scrunch up and he sighs, "Well…you like Gale…"

Ah.

"Vick…"

How is she supposed to tell him his brother despises her? That she ranks somewhere between entrails and fungus in his book, but that at least he sees a point in both those things…

"No, Madge, just listen. Katniss likes Peeta well enough, and Gale likes you well enough. It's the same thing!"

It's not though. Katniss and Peeta don't have a choice in the matter. Their lives, their families'lives, the District, all depend on their love affair.

And besides, Gale does not like Madge well enough.

He barrels on, "Look, I know he's grumpy and he stinks when he comes home from the mines and he's dirty, really, really dirty, and he's hairy, he's got hair in places you don't even want to know about…"

Madge feels her face turning crimson. She doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. She fights off an embarrassed smile.

"Vick, you-Gale and I, we aren't-no, Vick."

"But," he looks crestfallen, "I promise he'll take good care of you. Girls really like him, so he must know how to treat them."

I'm sure he does. Madge thinks wryly.

"Is it because of the hair thing? Rory said I shouldn't say anything. He said it was normal, but I dunno."

Madge snorts, "No, that's not it."

Vick looks down at his hands, "Is it because of the whipping?"

She sinks into the mattress beside him and takes his hand, "Vick, that…should have never happened. Gale didn't deserve that. No one would ever argue he did."

"See? You care," he leans on her shoulder. "He needs someone, Madge. You like him, I know you do. You look at him like mom looks at dad's picture."

He seems to shrink right in front of her. A fragile little boy just trying to make his brother feel better by giving him someone that will love him.

It's a little misguided, but done out of love none the less.

"Vick, don't you think Gale needs to have a say in who you marry him off to?"

She feels his head shake, "He doesn't always make good choices."

#######

The prep team arrives for Katniss' wedding shoot earlier than expected, but come and go without incident. Madge hears an announcement at the school, mandatory viewing that evening.

Delly Cartright, says it's probably Katniss' wedding dresses.

"Prim said she had the shoot yesterday, and you know how quick they are."

Madge nods in agreement. The Capitol is quick, but wedding dresses are hardly the stuff a mandatory viewing is made of.

She wishes she weren't right.

When they announce that it's time for the Quarter Quell her mother disappears into herself and her father pats her hand.

They are safe. But Katniss isn't. Peeta isn't.

"Haymitch," her mother begins crying. "Haymitch will have to go back."

Heaving sobs begin racking her mother's already frail frame, and she falls over onto her husband.

Madge watches her mother sob on her father. There's something about it that doesn't sit evenly, but there are pieces missing, and Madge can't puzzle it together without them.

Instead of worrying, though, about something so trivial, she leans onto her mother and hums her favorite nocturne.

#######

Madge is in the twilight of sleep when she hears someone banging around in her back yard.

Gale has shown up, out of the blue, in the middle of the night, absolutely reeking of alcohol and raving. He's spent months practically ignoring her and now he wants her as his personal therapist. A small, rather vindictive part of her half wants to let him make such a racket that the night watchmen catch him and take him to the tank to dry out. Then she remembers Thread, the whipping post, Vick, Posy, and Rory, and of course Gale's already poor standing in the community and she can't.

"It isn't fair!"

He's pacing back and forth in her garden, trampling a couple of her last cabbages.

"She's s-s'ppos'd t'have a happily ever-ever after." He runs his hand over his face. "She's the s-s-star-cross'd l'ver!"

"Lovers," she holds up two fingers helpfully. "There are two of them. A pair. A couple."

"Shut up, Unders'see," he mutters. "I don't care about Mell'rk."

He trips over his own feet, tumbling into a tomato cage before landing on the carrots. She sighs and takes a seat next to him, pulling her knees to her chest and resting her cheek against them.

"She shouldn't have to go back. They changed the rules once." His voice quivers and he looks to her, "Why can't they do it again?"

Madge forces a small, sad smile. "Because the 'Star-crossed lovers' is a tragedy, Gale. It's meant to come to a bad end."

"It's a love story," her murmurs.

She snorts, "Not even close. Don't you remember freshmen literature?"

Gale glares, "I had bett'r things t'do freshmen year than read some s-stupid play."

Her face flushes and she feels a little cruel. Of course Gale had had better things to do than read a story by some long dead playwright. He didn't have the luxury of a comfortable home and full stomach that she did.

"Romeo and Juliet die. They kill themselves. And they got a lot of people killed along the way to their end." Now she thinks about it, it's actually a pretty fair comparison for Katniss and Peeta, considering how their Game nearly ended…

"Peeta will protect Katniss, Gale. He's going to get her home again. You'll see." She inspects the now ruined cabbage, "Peeta, he's a good guy. I know you don't want to think about it, or admit it, but he is."

With a grunt, Gale flops back and Madge flinches. Her poor cabbages.

"I know he is." He growls. "Goddamnit, I know he is."

The emptiness that follows is hollow. She wishes she had something more than empty hope to offer him. Something like the morphling she'd taken to him after his whipping. A real, physical balm for his aching soul, but there is nothing. Katniss and Peeta are all but condemned, and there is nothing she or Gale can do.

"Would he die for her?"

She almost doesn't hear him; his voice just barely reaches her over the thick blanket of quiet that has settled over them.

Madge stares up at the sky, the moon peeks out at her from behind a cloud, and she nods, "Yeah, he would. He will."

"He loves her?"

It sounds less like a question and more like a child needing affirmation. Madge nearly laughs, not because it's funny, but because it's so painfully sad.

"Yeah, he does."

Gale sits up, turns slightly green, then flops back down.

"You're drunk," she reminds him.

"Yeah, yeah, I remember." He presses his fingers to his eyes.

You're going to have one hell of a hangover come morning. She thinks as she watches him struggle to sit up, slower this time.

Once he's back in the upright position he fixes her in his fuzzy gaze.

"Could you do it?" He asks. She frowns, unsure what he's talking about now. He seems to realize he's lost her and tries to refocus.

"Could you die for someone you loved? I mean, if you didn't know if they loved you too, or at least not-not like you loved them?"

Madge remembers running through the bitter cold, through blinding white sheets of snow and stinging wind. She remembers praying the new peacekeepers didn't catch her until she'd made her precious delivery. She remembers a dull ache in the center of her chest, wanting to be brave, wanting to ease his pain.

She shrugs.

"Don't know," she gives him a faint smile. "Let's hope I never have to find out."

After a few minutes of thick silence, Gale's sluggish voice breaks the night again.

"Went and saw her," he mutters. "Been drinking with Haym-mitch."

Oh good, he has a drinking buddy now.

She hears a couple of Peacekeepers coming around the corner, can see their outline in the streetlight. Before they can see she and Gale sitting in the garden she grabs him by the hand and pulls him up onto the porch and in to the house.

There's no curfew for adults, but Gale is a known troublemaker and stinking drunk, so it's probably not the wisest decision to let him wander the streets alone.

Her mother was given a half dose of her remaining morphling, so she won't wake for much, and her father is exhausted. Madge could throw a party and they wouldn't know it.

Docile as a puppy, he lets her pull him up the stairs to her room. If he were Mr. Abernathy she'd just put him in the guestroom, but she wants to keep an eye on him, make sure he doesn't wander off and get himself and his family into more trouble. He's working again, unhappy and unpleasant a prospect as that is, and Hazelle has a job keeping Mr. Abernathy from living in filth, but one wrong move could jeopardize everything.

She shuts the door and turns to find him staring at the bed.

"Trying to seduce me, Un-undersee?"

He gives her a drunken little grin. She might've found it cute were it not for how irritated with him she's feeling.

"I was under the impression all it took to seduce you was low standards and a secluded spot at the slag heap?"

He snorts, "Slag heap or a nice soft bed, e-either one."

Her stomach flops. He's toying with her again. Whether he knows it or not.

Madge bites her lip and puts her hands on his chest, pushes the drink sloshed coat off, and shoves him to the bed, "Sleep it off, Gale."

She has the presence of mind not to scream when he grabs her and pulls her down with him. He isn't trying anything, not that she can tell anyway, just seems to want the comfort of a living body next to his. She might've been Prim's goat and he'd be just as happy.

Well…maybe not just as happy.

He nuzzles his face into her hair, inhaling, she can feel his lips against her scalp. She's hyperaware of his body pressed a little too tightly to hers, the heat from him, the smell. If he can't feel her heart pounding madly against him he can't feel anything, she's certain of it.

He's half on top of her, one of his hands at the nape of her neck and the other clutching at the lowest part of her back. He's crushing her. He's a stomach sleeper, and she wonders if he always has been or if he only does so because of his still surely painful back. Her face is pressed into his neck, the hollow space between his chin and his chest. She could count every coarse hair on his neck and jaw if she wants. Part of her does.

Then he begins snoring softly.

He's passed out.

Carefully, so as not to wake him, she disentangles herself, crawls out from under him. She pulls the little blanket up from the bottom of her bed and covers him, smoothes his messy hair, kisses him goodnight, just barely brushing her lips to his rough cheek. She takes his disgusting coat and kicks it to the corner.

"'Night, Gale."

She curls up in her reading chair, pulling her robe closer around her and starts her vigil.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine.
> 
> AN: Again, thanks to FortuneFaded2012 for beta'ing.

When she wakes she's in her bed, covered in her blanket that still smells slightly of drink and sweat.

She's momentarily confused, groggy and emotionally exhausted. She looks around in a haze.

"Gale?" She murmurs before she realizes it should be obvious he isn't there by where she is.

Her stomach does a summersault when she realizes he must have put her to bed before leaving for the mines. Even with what is probably a spectacular hangover, he still had to work.

Kicking the blanket off she gets up and sees he's left his coat where she tossed it the night before.

She has a moment of panic, worried he'll be cold without it. Jumping to her closet, she reaches for the oversized coat of her mother's. The one she'd worn running to him during the blizzard to bring the morphling. She'll run his coat to him. But her hand only meets air. Her coat is gone.

He'd taken it when he apparently couldn't find his own.

With a sigh of relief she stumbles back to her bed and collapses down. She brings the inside of his coat to her nose and takes a deep breath.

Such a stupid thing to do. She thinks.

But it smells sogood.

#######

The days leading up to the Reaping are filled with taking her father's papers to the three daily training Victors and helping them with their training as much as her limited skills will allow. Her father tells her it doesn't matter anymore, if they see her going to the Victors' Village. Gale isn't laid up there anymore and enough time has passed that it doesn't look suspicious.

"We just need to put our boot on and trudge on, Pearl." He smiled sadly, "All we can do."

So she does.

Everyday after school she gathers up her father's papers and pretends to sneak them to the three Victors.

Peeta is the most studious, pouring over the papers and reading out interesting bits about the statistics and who they're likely to encounter during the Games. He takes an obscene amount of notes.

"Your father is from Ten, right Madge?" He asks her one day after reading an article about the five living Victors from the livestock District.

Madge nodded.

Squinting at the picture, his mouth turns down, "You'd think there'd be more of them, wouldn't you?" He jabs his finger at the picture labeled 'Mary Jacson'. "They should be really good at killing, but there've only been six total."

Before she answers, Madge considers how much Peeta needs to know. He's been tense, chilly, and with good reason, but she doesn't want to overwhelm him with unnecessary information that won't really help him in the long run. Besides, what good would telling him the truth do? District Ten's Tributes know what happens to prize animals-that they're sold to the highest bidder to be paraded around and worse-telling him would only make things worse.

"Livestock are raised to be killed," she starts carefully. "Despite how it seems, none of us really are. People know what's coming and fight back."

"We don't always know what's coming," he mutters to himself.

She almost asks him what he means, but stops herself. Some things are meant to be private, and while she isn't certain what's bothering him, she can guess it has to do with Katniss. Their troubles aren't her business unless he makes them so.

She stays with the three of them one evening, to watch tapes of former Victors and their 'glorious' triumphs.

Peeta, of course, chooses District Ten's.

"Since the Mayor is from there you might pick up on something from them," Peeta says.

Madge doesn't really think that logic holds up, her father only speaks of his former District occasionally, and Madge has never been there. Still, she shrugs and drops, cross-legged, in front of the couch.

The first tape shows a dark haired, caramel skinned girl, probably seventeen or eighteen, named Coraline Lons. She's proficient with a knife, snaps necks with ease. Tommy Brandsetter, the lone male Victor, is a redheaded beast. Though not tall, he's nothing less than a stack of muscles, and wields a sword with deadly elegance.

Mary Jacson, a tall, platinum haired girl is next. She seems harmless enough, but like Coraline Lons, she's able to break her opponents' necks with the frightening grace of a dancer in a macabre ballet.

The final two are the most recent, the 67th and 68th. Windy Parlez, a delicate looking girl, throws a tomahawk as if it were an extension of her own body. She's clever too, surviving, not like the other three, with force, but with her wits. Madge isn't certain, but she may know her medicinal herbs better than even Mrs. Everdeen.

The tape that catches Madge's attention the most, though, is the one labeled 'Phoebe Alameda'.

When the tape starts, it isn't the brisk Victor that greets them, but a confused little girl who doesn't even hear her own name called to the stage. Her wide eyes flicker around; to a girl she clearly knows that has taken a step away from her, frowns at her slightly. Then a Peacekeeper, blonde headed with a sad smile on his face, comes up to her.

Birdy says something to him, but Madge can only make out the last few words 'I'm Phoebe Alameda'.

She looks so painfully small throughout the chariot ride that Madge wonders how she overcame such an obvious shortcoming. Then the interview comes on. She jokes about her opponents disadvantage ("My youthfulness is clearly my strong point," she tells Caesar with a cheeky grin. Madge has heard the joke somewhere before, yet can't place it), but gives a genuine answer when asked what she looked forward to if she won.

During her Game, the clever girl that Madge had met reappears in full force. It turns Madge's stomach watching someone so small slowly open herself up to becoming a cold-blooded killer.

When her District Partner is dying, his lung punctured after being stomped by the cannibalistic boy from Six, Birdy does what Madge is certain she could never do. She pulls the little dagger, the one Madge remembers her flinging at Gale, and cuts his throat.

Peeta shakes his head, covers his eyes, but Katniss and Mr. Abernathy simply stare.

"Forgot she had to do that," Mr. Abernathy mutters, more to himself than the others.

Somehow, Madge doubts Birdy has forgotten.

At the end of the tape, an avalanche, a Gamemaker ploy to keep the clearly disturbed Titus the Cannibal from winning, Birdy has lost her luster. Madge wonders how long it had taken her to get it back.

"I think we could beat that one," Katniss says, trying to glance at Peeta's notes. "She only won because of a technicality. I don't think she's a threat."

Peeta shakes his head, "Just because a technicality gave her the final push, doesn't mean she isn't a threat."

Prim, who'd come in from the kitchen with a few snacks, she's been constantly making Katniss a and Peeta eat, nods.

"She's the one that came to the District and prepped us for the interviews." She sits the bowl she's holding down, "She's…nice, but I think Peeta is right. She's definitely a threat."

Prim had seen the Victor's temper flare when Gale had threatened to walk out, and obviously remembers the glint in her eyes as she'd threatened Prim's newly christened 'cousin' with her little dagger.

"The Victors from Ten probably won't be a problem," Madge finally says. There's no reason for Katniss and Peeta to waste energy studying people that aren't even going to put in any effort.

Katniss' eyebrows arch up, "Why not?"

Madge frowns over at the bowl, searching for the words. How do you explain to anyone the logic of a District that takes out tesserae on its own orphans, uses the grain and oil to keep the District alive? That the Victors would see another win, another victory, a higher place in the feeding trough of the Capitol, as another insult in their miserable lives?

"They're about protecting the herd." Madge shrugs, "They'll consider the other Victors their family. They won't kill their family. They'll die to protect them."

It's part of the truth. Hadn't Birdy said she would do whatever it took to keep the greatest number of people safe? Right now the Victors were the ones in danger, dying would definitely protect the most of their Victor family.

"Plus," Mr. Abernathy grunts, "They're all a bunch of lunatics." His eyes flicker to Madge, "Pearl has it pegged. Trust me; I've known most of them for longer than I care to remember. They won't cause us any trouble."

They move on to planning out the route for the next day's run after that.

#######

Gale comes by on Sundays to help the three Victors. Well, two, Mr. Abernathy is of the mind that he needs at least one day off from the 'torture'. Madge suspects he's holed up in his house drinking himself into oblivion.

Madge tries to stay away on those days. Gale deserves as much of the dwindling time with Katniss as he can get, but Prim and Mrs. Everdeen seem to enjoy Madge's company more than watching snares be set, so she makes short stops during the afternoon just to appease them.

"They're all doing good, aren't they?" Prim asks. "I mean, doing well."

Madge nods, tries not to stare at Gale's back. She can imagine the lacy criss-cross of scars stretched across his taut shoulders as he explains something about a particular snare to Katniss and Peeta.

"They'll be as good as Careers in no time," she finally tells them with a smile.

It's a lie, and they surely know it, but they smile and accept the false hope Madge has somehow found herself handing out. The year before she'd thought it cruel, to build them up with a lie about Katniss' chances, but now she sees it's all they have to hold on to.

#######

Katniss and Peeta, being young and in good shape to begin with, fair well with all the training. Haymitch is a mess.

During a daily run Madge takes pity on him and slows to a jog to walk it with him.

"Am I going to have to carry you?" She asks, half joking, but mostly serious. He's breathing hard and fast.

He wheezes and shakes his head before doubling over, hands to knees.

She pulls a small bottle of water Katniss' mother had given her from her waistband and hands it to him.

"You need to drink more water."

He grimaces before snatching it from her, "Yeah."

"I'm serious Mr. Abernathy. Alcohol will dehydrate you."

He simply rolls his eyes before emptying the entire contents down his throat. She watches his Adam's apple bob as he swallows. He's in dire need of a shave.

"How's that mother of yours, Pearl?"

He says it offhandedly, like it's small talk. He stares off into the tree-line and fiddles with the now empty bottle between his fingers.

"Okay, I guess."

She isn't, not really. The box of morphling she'd donated to Gale had put her already strained supply at a breaking point. She is barely able to take a quarter the dose daily that she had been. Though she's more coherent, she's in considerably more pain. Madge has even consulted Mrs. Everdeen quietly, begging for discretion, about herbs and roots that might alleviate some of her pain.

"I'm sorry dear," Katniss' mother had told her. "There's just nothing to compare to that morphling."

Mr. Abernathy nods absently.

"Hurting, huh?"

Madge shoots him a narrow look and nods.

"Tried to get her some more, you know. Have a few people that are friendly, drinking buddies of mine, back in the Capitol, thought they might be able to get their hands on a few more vials for her. To replace the ones she gave to the cousin." He lets out a long sigh and rubs his eyes.

"Why?"

He's always done kind things for them, or at least as kind as she's certain he's able, when he isn't busy being an enormous pain in the backside. He's made sure to attend every one of her birthdays since her eighth (a feat not even both her parents can claim), brings her chocolate from the Capitol after each Games, and comes by to keep her mother company on particularly bad days.

He turns to her, studies her for a few minutes. Then ignores the question entirely. "You still lusting after the cousin?"

She fights the desire to roll her eyes, "I was nev-No! I'm not and I never was."

Mr. Abernathy smirks at her. He reaches out and moves a wayward hair from her face, pushes it behind her shoulder, "Wouldn't get so worked up if it weren't true, would you, Pearl?"

He's being difficult deliberately, to irritate her, just for his own amusement. She huffs and turns to run off ahead, but he catches her by the wrist.

For several moments he stares at her, a little fuzzy, and Madge wonders if he isn't having some kind of stroke. She should've given him the other water at her waist. Then he pulls her hand to his face and gives it a dry kiss, his prickly beard scratching her skin.

"You look just like her."

She wrinkles her nose in confusion, "Who?"

"Your mother. Your aunt. Both of them. Beautiful."

Is he having some kind of fit? Madge frowns at him and begins to ask him if he's feeling well, he isn't making any sense.

He pats her hand in a paternal kind of way. "Your father is lucky."

Then he trots off, leaving Madge wondering if maybe he hasn't answered her question after all.

#######

One Sunday Gale offers to walk her home.

It surprises her. He hasn't spoken to her since his meltdown, since she'd let him sleep in her bed, a fact that still threatened to bring a fierce blush to her cheeks.

No one has told him about the morphling, as far as Madge can tell. They have their reasons for it and she's okay with that, he has enough to worry about without stressing about repaying her for something she wants no compensation for.

They walk in that similar uncomfortable silence that had plagued them back during the 74th Games, the silence that begs to be broken.

"Thanks," he finally says.

She isn't sure for what and gives him a weak look.

"For, not ratting me out, when I," he rubs the back of his neck uncomfortably, "drug up in your yard."

Madge gives him a short little nod.

"I have your coat, my mom is cleaning it. You have mine, somewhere. I couldn't find it, uh, that morning."

She can feel her cheeks beginning to warm. She's been using his coat, turned inside out, as a sort of security blanket, inhaling his scent as she drifted off to sleep.

Madge bites her lip.

"Oh? I haven't seen it," she lies.

It's pitifully thin and patched. There's no way it keeps the cold from him. Her mother's oversized coat, which is actually a man's heavy coat, is a better choice for him.

"Just keep the one you took. Since I lost yours."

He stops and stares at her for a moment, trying to catch her lie, but she's had a lifetime of practice. He won't.

Finally, he lets out a long breath before waving her on, toward her house.

They reach the back gate and she's about to tell him goodbye when he catches her hand, "Hey, Undersee?"

He runs his thumb over her knuckles and she closes her eyes just a little. Why does he do those things?

"I, uh, I'm sorry, about the past few months." He's looking at her hand, holding it like he had the last day of the Games. "I've been a real asshole to you."

She forces a little laugh. "What's new?"

He shrugs in resignation, as if to say yeah, you're right.

"Get home safe, Gale."

She gives his hand a little squeeze and runs to the porch.

#######

Vick and Rory come almost daily with her after school, first to her house, then to the Victors' Village to meet up with their mother.

She's glad for the company, though she could do without Rory's daily recap.

"…and Seamus said he saw the side of Braxton's boob, but I don't think he really did."

Vick shakes his head, eyes flickering to Madge's chest, "Braxton doesn't have boobs."

"That's what I said!"

Shifting her shirt, Madge quickens her pace and leaves the conversation behind.

When they reach the back of the Everdeen house Madge hears her name.

"Madge!"

Mrs. Hawthorne waves her over to Mr. Abernathy's back porch.

With Rory and Vick trailing behind her, tying up the loose ends of their boob conversation, Madge jogs over to the steps leading to the open backdoor. Mrs. Hawthorne seems to have been tossing things into a bin by the side of the railing, probably from Mr. Abernathy's horrendous icebox.

She gives Madge a small look before calling out to her sons. "Boys, go play with your sister."

They groan. Rory starts to protest, but his mother cuts him off with a sharp look.

Her gray eyes follow them as they trudge up the stairs and through the door. Vick turns, gives Madge a small, pitiful wave, before his mother kicks the door shut on him. "Go."

When she turns back to Madge her expression is concerned. She takes a few steps to the small table that sits at the far edge of the porch and picks up what looks like a stack of papers. For a second she studies them, determining whether or not she even wants to do what she's started out on, then sighs.

"I found these, while I was cleaning. I thought you might want them."

Hand out, Madge takes them.

They're a mixture of papers and pictures. Madge recognizes them as ones she'd given Mr. Abernathy over the years. There are several birthday cards, faded and falling apart, that Madge had made him every year since she'd been about nine. He has a collection of her school photos, his scratchy handwriting noting her age and school year on the backs of each.

There are also a few notes from her mother. They're too faded to read, yellowed at the edges. Madge only knows who wrote them by the name on the back, 'Haymitch', in her mother's delicate looking scroll.

He's also cut out a few newspaper articles like Madge's birth announcement and the honor roll for the school.

After spending several seconds trying to read her mother's notes, without success, Madge shrugs and hands the stack back to Mrs. Hawthorne.

"Okay. I really don't want them."

Mrs. Hawthorne frowns, a little crease forms between her eyes. "Should he have these?"

Madge nods, "I gave him most of it." Though she doesn't know why he's kept any of it.

"It's a bit odd, don't you think? Him keeping all of this."

It probably is, but it's Mr. Abernathy, so Madge doesn't think too much of it.

"He probably just didn't want to hurt my feeling by tossing it all out." As if she'd have even known.

"Maybe…" Mrs. Hawthorne stares down at the papers. She looks up, still clearly not thrilled with putting the papers back wherever she'd found them, "Are you sure you don't want them?"

If Madge wanted her own picture she would get it taken and she doesn't really want any of the other papers. Mr. Abernathy doesn't have anyone, maybe Madge and her mother's little tokens are the only things even remotely resembling family he has.

"He's not being a creep, Mrs. Hawthorne, I promise."

#######

Mr. Abernathy walks her home the next day.

It's balmy, sticky, she half expects him to pass out, but he doesn't, just presses on. The Reaping is tomorrow.

"How's that damned Bird's gift working out for you?"

The little compact is still shining bright green when she checks it. The red screen Birdy had warned her of hasn't appeared yet. The Capitol's signals can still be blocked.

"Good."

"Good," he echoes. "How's your mother?"

He asks every day. As if the answer will change in the less than twenty four hours since he's seen her.

"Same."

He nods.

She doesn't ask him how he's feeling, because she knows the answer. Horrible. Peeta will go in with Katniss no matter which of their names are called. He's fond of both of them and watching them go back into the Arena will devastate him.

"They'll forgive you, you know?"

He looks at her and she stops, takes his hand and squeezes it.

"Katniss and Peeta, they love you, in their own way. Like you love them in your own weird way." She chuckles, "They're your kids."

He snorts, "That's why I never raised any. That's what I'd end up with."

Madge sighs and tugs him along, "You could do worse."

"Or better," he mutters, more to himself than her. She pretends not to hear.

When they reach her house they both sense something is wrong. There's a darkness settled around it, seeping out from under the doors and the window frames.

Madge bounds over the two steps to the porch and stops dead in her tracks when she sees a man in a Peacekeeper's uniform standing in the kitchen.

Thread.

#######

Mr. Abernathy invites himself to dinner, though they all pretend it was planned.

Romulus Thread also invites himself to dinner, but no one pretends it was planned.

"A little get together is long overdue," he tells them.

He insists they use the small table in the informal dining area, 'more intimate' he tells them.

"No need to sit so far apart. Officials like ourselves should be cozy with each other."

Cozy is most definitely not what Madge wants to be with him, of all people. The thought of breaking bread with such a vile excuse for a human being zaps any hunger she might have felt.

Her mother is wedged between her diplomatically straight faced father on her left and a glowering Mr. Abernathy on her right. Madge ends up between Mr. Abernathy and Thread.

She can't help but glance at his hands as he cuts, with little grace, through his meat. Those hands nearly killed Gale. For the first time in her increasingly miserable life, Madge wants to cause actual physical harm to another human being. She wants to take her little steak knife and cut off his hands, so they can't hurt anyone like they hurt Gale ever again.

"From Ten, originally, aren't you, Mayor Undersee?"

Madge's father nods as he wipes his mouth, "Yes, emigrated from Ten nearly twenty years ago. My grades won me a place in the local magistrate. I moved on from there, through the Capitol's special classes, you know."

Thread chews noisily on his meat, his mouth is closed, but the gnashing is still loud and sloppy.

"Cut my teeth there," he tells them as he mixes his potatoes with his meat. "Run much tighter than this ship."

"This isn't Ten, the people of Twelve are a different breed."

"They just need to be whipped into shape."

Madge nearly drops her fork at the word 'whipped'. Thread shovels far too much of the potato and meat concoction into his mouth and stares at her. She can feel her skin crawling under his eyes.

"Ten and Nine, disciplined Districts. Know how to behave. Manners. Give it a few generations, maybe you can breed some good sense, some manners, into these mongrels." His eyes flicker to Madge. "Not hungry, girl?"

She's been sitting, frozen with her fork lancing the smallest piece of meat on her plate. She swallows down the bile that has risen in her throat, "No, sir."

"See," he keeps his eyes on Madge, "manners."

She suddenly wishes her neck line were just a few inches higher and the material of her dress a few weights heavier as his cold eyes travel down her neck and along her chest and arms.

Mr. Abernathy chokes loudly and messily, disrupting Thread's roaming stare, knocking over his wine glass and spilling the contents across the table. The red mess goes like a waterfall over the edge and onto Thread's white Peacekeeper uniform.

"Damn it!" He swears as he stands, jostling the table and sending the rest of the drinks to the floor. "Damned inebriate!"

Madge's mother, who has stood to pound on Mr. Abernathy's back, gives him a sharp look, "Language, sir."

Thread glares.

"I think we have some club soda in the study, Mr. Thread." Madge's father's tone is even. He brings his hand up and gestures toward the door.

Thread gives them one last hateful look before stomping out. Her father gives them a cautious look, plainly saying 'I'll deal with this', then follows Thread out.

Mr. Abernathy's, many lined face wrinkles up and a wicked glare appears in his eyes. He finishes coughing with a final pat on the back from Madge's mother.

They take him to his regular bathroom and begin helping him clean the bits of food and drink that had stained his clothes during his coughing spell.

"You shouldn't've upset him, Haymitch," her mother tells him as she gently wipes potato from his collar. Her heavy lidded eyes are steady on him.

His gray eyes flicker up to Madge and he mutters, "Didn't like the looks he was giving little Pearl here."

"I can handle myself," Madge tells him. She won't have people getting hurt on her account. He was only looking, after all. She didn't like it, but she could live with it.

Madge runs upstairs to grab a shirt of her father's for Mr. Abernathy. He has a special batch specifically for when District Twelve's oldest Victor has a spill in their presence.

She takes the stairs down two at a time and when she comes to a stop, a few paces from the door to the bathroom, she sees her mother wrapped in Mr. Abernathy's arms.

His chin is resting on the top of her now messy blonde hair. Her pale, thin arms are draped gently around him. Mr. Abernathy's hands are on her back, one pressed to the middle and the other at the nape of her neck, toying with the furls of her hair that have escaped their band.

Madge feels like she's intruding on something very intimate. Which is ridiculous, it's her mother and Mr. Abernathy.

She wants to interrupt. They shouldn't be holding each other like that; she's about to when her mother breaks from him. She tips his head down, stands on her toes, whispers something, and gives him a chaste little kiss on the cheek. Then she glides out, leaving Mr. Abernathy staring at the air she's just vacated.

They stay frozen like that for a while, him staring at the empty space in front of him and Madge watching him, still not sure what she's witnessed.

A hand settles on her shoulder and she turns sharply, finding her father behind her. She holds his gaze, wondering how long he's been there, what he's seen.

"Dad?"

He gives her a small, sad smile before brushing past her and down to the bathroom.

"Haymitch?" It snaps the old Victor from his trance.

"Oh, Daniel, I, uh…"

Madge's father smiles and pats him on the back, "Thread's gone and Madge has a shirt for you. Get changed and get home. Big day tomorrow, right?"

#######

Silently she helps Mr. Abernathy change his shirt, as she'd done a hundred times before, maybe a thousand.

She walks him to the door, unsure what she's going to say, if she even should.

Her mouth is about to take off, ask him what the hellhe and her mother are doing, when he grabs her and pulls her into a bone crushing hug.

"You stay alive, you understand, Pearl? You keep playing this game out and you stay alive."

Too stunned to begin her tirade, Madge nods dumbly into his shoulder.

He pulls back and gives her a searching look, holds her face between his rough hands, "Say it. Say it, kid."

He has more intensity in his eyes than she's ever seen in another human being.

"Okay, okay, I'll stay alive. I-I'll play it out."

His thumbs run over her cheeks and he studies her for what feels like several minutes, memorizing her, from her eyelashes to her nose.

He pushes forward and gives her a rough kiss on the forehead then rushes away, down the steps and through the gate.

She reaches up, runs her hand over her face, which is slightly wet, but she hasn't been crying.

#######

"I think it started a few years after he came back from the Quell," her father tells her. "Haymitch's family was killed, under very mysterious circumstances. Your mother felt a connection with him because he'd been kind to Maysilee. They were both very alone I suppose."

Bugs buzz in the distance as Madge and her father sit on the back porch.

Mr. Abernathy and her mother had been something to each other, she'd always know that, but it had always been a pair of fellow mourners. Nothing more.

"They parted ways before your mother and I got together. He didn't want to put her at risk, I think. It's nothing."

It had certainly looked like something to Madge's eyes.

Her father leans back, takes a long swallow of his ice tea then rattles the glass and catches a few small slivers of ice in his mouth to chew on.

"It doesn't bother you?"

It had to. His wife apparently carries a torch of some kind for another man. A man her husband invites into his home, a man he lends clothing, a man he's cleaned vomit off of when he's drank himself sick.

He gives her a soft look and pulls her to his side, "Haymitch was a danger, to himself and those around him-"

Madge jerks back, "And he's not now?"

"He's been a sad drunk for nearly twenty years. Until recently, no, he'd done a fine job of making at least those who could potentially be hurt by association to him, safe."

She rests her head against his shoulder and closes her eyes.

"-if you don't know your history you keep making the same mistakes."

"I mean it, sweetheart, he's no good for you. He and that girl, they're more trouble than you need, you hear me? Understand?"

Her stomach lurches and she wonders how much history she's missed that she may end up repeating herself.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine.
> 
> AN: Again, thanks to FortuneFaded2012 for the beta.

It had never happened before, being denied a final goodbye to the Tributes.

Gale is furious and it takes his mother and siblings all telling him to calm down, holding his hands, to get him out of the Justice Building.

"Gale, there's nothing we can do," his mother tells him in hushed tones.

Prim and her mother are a sobbing mess, clinging to each other outside the train station.

Madge wishes her father had some kind of authority, but Thread is the law now. Judge, jury, and if he so chooses, executioner.

"Don't worry, you'll see her again."

Madge pushes Vick and Rory back, blocking them from Thread. He'd appeared out of thin air, a specter of death and evil. His cold eyes flicker over her yellow sundress.

"District Seven makes excellent pine boxes."

Gale makes a threatening noise, a low growl, and Thread sneers at him.

"I'd mind your manners, boy, or the Everdeens won't just be losing a sister and daughter during these Games."

His gaze refocuses on Madge. He reaches out and pulls a strand of her hair from her ponytail, twirling it between his fingers. She tries desperately not to recoil.

She's suddenly pulled back. She tumbles into Gale's chest as he wraps a protective arm around her waist. He's giving Thread a dark look, daring him to touch her again.

"Gale!" She hisses. It's almost a repeat of last year, when Birdy Alameda had come to prepare them for the 'friends and family' interviews. He's challenging someone dangerous, someone with power, and this time, someone who has already hurt him.

Gently, reluctantly, she frees herself from him and stands her ground in front of Thread.

"I'm sorry, sir." She thinks quickly, "He's just upset about his cousin. Emotions are running high. We're all very sorry for any insult."

His thin lips stretch into a smile that sends chills racing down her back. He takes her chin between his thumb and forefinger, "See? Good breeding. Good manners. They could learn a lot from you, Miss Undersee."

He lets her go, with a little more force than was necessary then casts a warning look to the Everdeens and Hawthornes before marching off, undoubtedly to darken someone else's day.

Madge turns back to Gale; his mother is already chastising him.

"Gale…"

"I know," he grunts through gritted teeth.

She can see it in his eyes, he knows how deadly stupid it is, challenging Thread.

"He shouldn't touch you," he growls.

If only this were simply some stupid boy at school paying her unwanted attentions, then Gale's chivalry would be much more desirable. Although, wholly unnecessary. Madge is positive she could take out any of the boys in District Twelve, Gale included, with a strategically placed jab and an uppercut. This is the Head Peacekeeper, though, he's pushing them, testing for sore spots, goading them into doing something stupid.

"I know, Gale, but there's nothing I can do."

The entire group looks disgusted.

"Your dad-" Vick starts.

"-has no power over Thread." She looks sadly at the Justice Building. "He's a law unto himself."

#######

They watch the recap of all the other Reapings in the Victor's Village.

Madge is horrified by the matronly woman in Four, so fragile looking, Volunteering. Then thereare the monsters from One and Two…the mad looking pair from Six…the mother in eight…

"Her hair isn't green, Momma," Posy points to the small figure on the television.

Four women and one man, stand behind a metal railing meant to keep cattle in line.

They could have been anyone, but certainly not Victors, as plain and uninteresting as they are.

Birdy's hair, her lips, her eyes, are all desperately normal. Dirty blonde hair and a faded green dress. She and the others are meeting their fate, whatever it may be, as they had when they were Reaped the first time.

The names are read, neither one Birdy's. Still in their pen she and the remaining women stand at the fence and shake small rattlers, tails from a poisonous snake like the one Madge's father keeps on his desk. It's a farewell to their friends of many years and a warning from a bettered people.

"I'm glad it wasn't her," Prim says quietly. "She wasn't so bad, really."

Madge forces a faint smile.

It bothers her that Birdy isn't the Tribute. Madge had thought she'd worked out a pattern, a reason for the choices. The Reaping was rigged, she knew that, and she'd assumed that all the Victors selected would be problem children, like Katniss and Haymitch. This Quell is the Capitol's chance to rid itself of so many of its troubles.

She'd assumed Birdy, with her warnings and her gift of the bug finding compact, was on their side. Now though, she isn't so sure.

#######

"I don't think you should," Madge tells Gale as he attempts to walk her home.

The less time he spends near the Town, near Thread's base of operations, the better. He's too volatile for her to be letting him walk with her when the slightest thing might set him off. Best he stay with his mother, she at least can exert some semblance of control over him.

She's already shaken off Vick and Rory, Gale is much more stubborn though.

"What if you run into Thread again?"

"Exactly."

His jaw sets and his eyes narrow. He's swallowing a very bitter brew.

She doesn't want to be responsible for Gale receiving another whipping, or being hung.

He hurls one of Prim's drying roots from the corner of the porch in frustration. "It's such bullshit!" His fists clench, "How can he push you around? You're the fucking mayor's kid! He shouldn't even look at you like that!"

Madge reaches out, puts her hand on his tense arm and he relaxes a little.

"That's it, though. No one is safe. That's the Game, Gale. We're all playing whether we know it or not."

Some are pawns, while others are more active, more destructive players. The real trouble is figuring out who is which.

"To hell with the Game, Madge."

That's where it probably ends, she thinks bitterly.

"Stay here and stay safe, Gale," Madge finally says before she walks off, toward the town.

#######

Gale turns up at her window that night.

"I just wanted to make sure you made it home."

He climbs in, sits on her bed, plucks up her book and flips through the pages. Fittingly enough, Catch-22 this time.

"It's almost one am," she points out. She'd been home for hours. He'd put himself in far more danger checking up on her than she'd been in making the journey home.

He puts the book down and wanders to her book shelf.

"What do you think they'll put her in this year?"

So that's why he's here.

He wants to pick her brain about his lost love.

A little disappointed, Madge takes a deep breath, trying to detect liquor on him. He would have to be a little drunk to have left the safety of his home just to question her about Katniss' fashion this year.

It's there, but much fainter this time. She's seen the old woman that sold most of it in the District in the stocks, so maybe it's getting harder to come by. Mr. Abernathy has been weaseling, less than covertly, her father's stock for weeks.

Still, he's drunk enough that she doesn't feel safe sending him out, where he can potentially get in trouble with Peacekeepers and Thread.

She flickers her eyes to her compact, flipping it up while his back is turned, still green.

"I don't know, Gale."

Something amazing she's sure, something that'll make the man in her room love her just that much more, make Madge a little duller in comparison. Not that it matters, Madge knows she's nothing more than a fading light in his life no matter what.

He wanders back to her bed, then past her to the window, before turning back to her. His eyes are hazy, he's too relaxed, alcohol and exhaustion are quickly folding in on him.

His fingers, thick and clumsier than they normally are, reach out and tug on the end of her ponytail. He winds it around his finger, runs the pad of his fingers over it.

"Your hair's soft," he mutters.

She isn't sure if it's meant as a compliment or a tipsy jib at her status. Suddenly, both his hands are on her head, tugging the ribbon from it, before weaving his fingers through it. It's so gentle, much gentler than she thought him capable of. Her eyes involuntarily flutter closed and she fleetingly wonders if he'd ever wanted to run his finger through her hair before this moment.

He pulls her to his chest, fingers still combing through her hair, "What if she doesn't come home?"

Hesitantly she pulls her arms up, wraps them around him.

"Don't worry. She will."

She's certain she's lying.

#######

She puts him in her bed again, face down and softly snoring into her pillow. She has the presence of mind to pull his boots off this time; last time she'd had a hard time explaining the dirt to Mrs. Oberst who'd yelled for nearly an hour before making Madge clean her own sheets.

The whole night she tries desperately to stay up, sitting in her little chair, determined to not miss him leave this time.

The sun has just peaked, streaking through her window with hints of pinks and oranges and yellows when she feelshands on her, under her knees and across her back.

Her face presses into his chest, inhales his sleepy scent, as he lifts her up and carries her to her bed. She stirs just a little when he sets her in the bed, somewhat upset with herself for having fallen asleep.

"Shhh," he whispers, smoothing her hair. "Go back to sleep."

It's so soothing, so soft; she vaguely wonders if it's the tone he uses with his siblings. Her eyes blink blearily up at him before drifting back into oblivion.

#######

She doesn't see him again until that night, the Tribute Parade, when his question is answered.

Peeta and Katniss are smoldering, glowing, beautiful.

They're going to be drowning in Sponsors, Madge knows it. She's been keeping an eye on the Capitol papers and there's already so much sympathy, something she hadn't thought the Capitol capable of, so much outrage for the 'Star-Crossed Lovers' that she can't imagine them not. Especially with this little display.

The commentators are beside themselves.

"Amazing!"

"Really outdone himself this year, hasn't he?"

There are several former Victors, more than usual, none look very happy. None are the glowing glittering beauties they'd been known as for so long. They're dull, faded creatures, all the shine has been rubbed from their faces and clothes.

A very old man from One growls about Katniss and Peeta's advantages. "Star crossed lovers! Best marketing in years!"

"Everyone wants them to have their happy ending," the moderator titters.

"These violent delights have violent ends," one of the Threes says. The panel's chatter dies, as if in a sudden vacuum.

"And in their triumph die, like fire and powder. Which, as they kiss, consume." Birdy Alameda finishes, not a green hair in sight.

"Romeo and Juliet, were a tragedy, and so too will these two be. One way or another," a Nine adds with a certain downturn of her mouth.

Prim looks to Madge, frowning, "What are they talking about?"

The high of Katniss and Peeta's entry, their majesty, is suddenly consumed by cold fear. While she isn't certain it's a warning as opposed to some strange act, it certainly isn't reassuring.

Madge's mother has come out of the house and to the viewing with Madge and her father. She's staring at the screen with uncommon focus for her.

"They're going to explode, dear."

At first they think she's referring to the outfits.

"No, Matilda, it's just a trick," her father reassures her.

She shakes her head, still focused on the screen, "No, not that. Powder and fire, they explode together. They're destroyed."

Prim and Mrs. Everdeen pale.

Madge takes a deep breath, "It's Shakespeare, 'Romeo and Juliet' the star-crossed lovers. That's all."

She hopes that's all.

Gale tenses; maybe some part of his mind remembers Madge telling him about the tragic end of that story. His eyes focus on Madge's mother. "It's just a stupid quote. It doesn't mean anything."

Her mother's face flickers as she turns to Gale, trying to bring him into focus with a vacant smile and wide eyes. She doesn't sense she's upset him. "I wish they'd have shown Haymitch…"

"Fire is a tricky thing, Mr. Hawthorne, it consumes and destroys, yes," Madge's father says, steering the conversation away from his wife's chatter, "but it also cleanses. It can cauterize a wound, sterilize a tool, or cook. They burn fields sometimes, destroy the old growth, so that new life can take root."

Madge likes her father's interpretation of fire better, though she doubts he even believes it to be the meaning behind the message. They hadn't received a call from Mr. Abernathy, it may not have been a message at all.

With a sigh her father takes her mother by the hand, "We'll see you at the house, Madge."

As they walk away Prim, wide eyed and frightened, asks again, "What were they talking about?"

Madge shrugs. She wishes she knew, but there is so much happening, she's certain of it, that neither she nor her father are privy to. Mr. Abernathy's plea before he left, the Shakespeare, the drastic wardrobe change for the commentating Victors, all point to something. She just doesn't know what, and she almost doesn't want to know.

#######

"I'm sorry I showed up at your house again."

Gale comes by after work to find Madge and his siblings making ice cream, which he'd somewhat reluctantly shared in. His friend, Thom is playing some kind of game with Rory and Vick up ahead while Posy dozes, covered from head to toe in purple juice, on Gale's shoulder.

Madge shrugs, "It's okay."

He shakes his head, "No, it's not. I shouldn't just show up drunk at your house all the time."

He hadn't been as drunk the last time though. She's certain she wouldn't mind him showing up at one in the morning every day, inebriated or not.

Stop that! She scolds herself.

She had changed the sheets before Mrs. Oberst could get to them this time, though they'd only had traces of the coal dust from his skin on them. Her pillowcase, though, has still yet to be washed. It still holds the scent of his hair in it.

I'm some kind of stalker.

Her scalp still tingles when she thinks of his fingers running over it, and she wishes he would reach out and do it again. He's not drunk now though, stone sober and bone weary form work. There's no hope of any slip of mistaken affection from him today.

A group of the new Peacekeepers wander by, giving Rory and Vick a warning for being too loud and Thom a glare for encouraging them. They're cold and young, eager to prove their worth against the rabble of District Twelve.

Several of them leer at Madge, whispering to one another and tracing her with their eyes. She crosses her arms over her chest and instinctively takes a step toward Gale.

"You need to get home," they tell Madge and Gale as they come to them. "Man shouldn't keep his pretty little wife and kid out at this time anyway."

She nearly corrects them, but hesitates. The Peacekeepers words and his eyes warn herthat admitting such a thing would be a bad move. Instead she takes Gale's hand and prays he understands.

Her heart stops when he drops her hand almost the instant their palms touch. It starts again, though, when his hand slides around her waist, pulls her flush to his side. His hand flattens, palm to her stomach, as he nods to the Peacekeepers.

They pass, slowly, continuing to leer at her.

Gale presses her tighter to him even once they've passed. "Bastards."

"Don't do anything," she warns him quietly.

After Darius disappeared following Gale's whipping even the kinder, formerly less rigid Peacekeepers that had preceded Thread are distancing themselves. They don't want to be spirited away, never to be heard from again, so they've lost their friendliness.

The new ones are violent, handpicked by Thread probably specifically for that particular trait. Upsetting them has landed more people in the stocks than Madge can even count.

"You shouldn't have walked with us," Gale tells her when he finally lets her go.

A little frown forms on her face. He's right, but she'd just wanted to be around them, bask in the tiny flicker of warm happiness they'd created with the ice cream for a little bit longer before going back to her headache consumed mother, missing father, and hateful housekeeper.

"Yeah," she finally says.

Gale looks like he wants to walk her back, but he's got his arms full of a sticky child and his brothers and Thom are watching him, waiting to be back on their way.

Vick and Rory come tumbling back, skid to a stop in front of them, and Thom, all arms and legs, nearly trips over them when he comes up after.

"What's the hold up?" Rory asks. He's got a glob of blueberry in his hair that he continues to pick at.

Madge gives them one of the smiles she uses during formal functions, real enough, but fake to the core, "I'm going to let you all head home from here." Vick tries to take her hand, but she hides both behind her back, "I shouldn't have come this far and you aren't walking me. I'll be fine."

They look unconvinced, but Gale gives them a stern look before turning back to Madge, "Be careful."

Her fake smile flickers up, into something a little more genuine, "I'll just run."

#######

Prim invites Madge to watch the scores.

She almost turns the request down, but can't when Prim gives her the sweetest, most hopeful smile while standing by Madge's now empty locker. The school year is over early this year, another way to save money and another way to keep the already minimally educated District away from knowledge.

The next day, after making her mother help in the garden, she takes a quick shower and changes into a dull blue dress, putting all her now unneeded school supplies away, and starts to fill a basket with squash and tomatoes as a gift for the Everdeens.

Then she hears the phone upstairs ring.

A cold dread fills her, makes her stomach clench, as she slowly makes her way up the stairs then into her father's office.

"Hello?"

"Staying safe, Pearl?"

Mr. Abernathy doesn't sound drunk, but then he's drank for so long he often seems unaffected. She hopes he's staying clear headed though, for Katniss and Peeta's sake.

She nods, remembers he can't see her before saying, "Yes."

"Good girl." He seems distracted, like he's doing more than one thing at a time, "Danny boy have you doing secretarial work?"

"They closed the schools," she explains. His scowl is almost audible over the line.

"Of course they did." He sighs, "I haven't got much time. You tell Danny boy to ready his bird cage."

Swallowing down a dozen questions, Madge manages to mutter out an, "Okay."

The line is quiet for a minute, she thinks he's hung up, or maybe passed out, then he coughs, "You stay safe, all of you back in Twelve, okay?"

It takes a second, a long second, for the oddness of his words to form in her head. Then, before she can say anything, let a question pass her lips, he's talking again.

"Tell your mother I-Katniss' token is a real hit here." He chuckles, a little bitterly, before saying his goodbye, "Be good, keep your eyes open, Pearl."

#######

Madge runs to the Justice Building, her legs and lungs burn when she flies past the front desk, into her father's office.

He doesn't let her so much as utter a word, not that she would, they'd long ago decided that the Justice Building wasn't safe for any conversation.

Grabbing her by the elbow, he quickly tugs her from the room, down the hall and out of the chilly building.

When she finishes telling him what Mr. Abernathy had told her, he sighs.

"You understood?"

She had. Birdy was coming back, which meant they were going to make Katniss and Peeta's humiliation a centerpiece to the show and wanted their families' reaction on film for all to see. Both had received high scores, probably not for something spectacularly physical. Mentioning the pin had told her that.

When they get to the house he gestures for her to pull her compact out. Her heart stops when it goes solid red.

The Capitol has changed the codes. She can't block them anymore.

They quietly shuffle from room to room, hoping that Madge's compact will flicker to green or yellow, but it only burns crimson.

After hours, after the sun has sunk below the trees in the distance, they finally come to the grim realization that nowhere is probably safe. They're trapped, snared like one of Katniss and Gale's rabbits.

Without speaking, her father leads her to his study, begins pulling boxes of papers out from cabinets and handing them to her. She's heavily loaded down when he finally motions for her to follow him.

They go out, onto the porch, then down and across the lawn, to the little shed Madge and her Poppa had used years ago to store supplies for her garden. Inside, her father pulls a small bucket out. He produces a packet of matches, strikes one, puts it to one of the newspapers, and drops it into the bucket.

His eyes glow in flickering light. He holds up one of the papers, indicates Madge should read, then gestures to the bucket.

Her stomach turns, unsure what she's about to learn in the many boxes.

It starts out mundane enough. She and her father pour over newspapers, searching for something, anything, Madge might've missed when she had been going over them with the others during training. They dig through transfer papers for all the new Peacekeepers, including Thread, examine the updates on the other Districts more closely, hoping to find some clue as to what might be coming their way.

When they can't, only end up with more of the same and a bucket of fire and ash, Madge feels her dread start to overwhelm her.

Then they get to the larger boxes, ones she can't imagine contain anything good within them.

There are maps, diagrams of the mines, letters from foremen discussing possible fixes for unsafe shafts dated just before the collapse Madge knew had killed Gale and Katniss' fathers. It makes her insides turn.

As she picks through the papers she finds maps of the land outside of Twelve, Madge recognizes the mark on a line representing the fence, the point where Katniss had taken her out into the woods. There are trails leading away from the demarcation of Twelve, through the woods, towards an unknown point. An elaborate diagram with almost illegible writing on it, showing what must be a breaker for an electrical circuit of some kind, Madge stares at it for a while before she makes out the words 'no override' in the spindly handwriting.

She finds letters from other Mayors. They seem bland at first, boring even, until Madge's father hands her a scrap of paper with a code on it.

It becomes much less mundane after that.

Discussions that seem to go back years, talks of contingency plans, what would be done should the Capitol decide to wipe one of the outer Districts again, are woven through each letter. Guerrilla warfare, the likes of which Madge has only read about in books her father and Mr. Abernathy had smuggled to her over the years, is encouraged if worse comes to worse.

Then newer letters turn up, talks of the revolts that are smaller, but clearly no less effective, in Four and Three that are making life a little less comfortable for those in the Capitol. They talk of what the other Districts can do, Nine and Ten might burn fields, but not until the very end, to protect Eleven and Twelve, the weakest Districts strategically.

Her father burns the papers, gives Madge a look.

When every last paper is nothing but ash, the fire is smothered out, Madge follows her father out.

"You understand?" He whispers when they reach the halfway point between the house and the shed.

Madge nods.

She's still piecing together some of it, but she understands most of it.

He's giving her the knowledge to protect herself. Things are only going to get worse, and he wants her to know that this is the plan. That it's probably no longer a matter of if but when the Capitol strikes. Like the Tributes, the people of the District will be denied a proper goodbye if the Capitol has any say in it.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine.
> 
> AN: Thanks to FortuneFaded2012 for beta'ing.

She spends the next day with her mother, hiding in her room. Madge reads stories out loud to her, simple things with faded pages and happy endings.

It isn't a certainty that they'll survive this, whatever this is going to be. Katniss and Peeta's deaths, which are hard to think about but are an almost inevitability given the circumstances, might earn them their place of the country's ignored child back. That's doubtful though, too much has happened, is happening, for them to allow a District like Twelve to continue on.

They'll be made an example of.

Madge falls asleep on the chaise in her parents' room, doesn't wake for dinner or to put on her nightgown, just sleeps straight through to the next morning.

"Wake up, love, you need to get ready."

Her mother comes into focus, her pale hair floating around her head and a vague look still floating in her eyes.

"The Hawthorne boy is here to see you."

Eyes flickering over to the little clock on her mother's bedside table, Madge tries not to groan. It's only eight thirty. Why is Vick up so early?

She runs a hand through her hair, tries to smooth out the tangles that have formed during her too long sleep, before getting up and wandering out to the hall.

Still yawning, she goes down the back stairs, into the kitchen.

"Nice look."

A deep voice, most definitely not Vick's chuckles from over by the door.

Madge's eyes snap open; all traces of sleepy fog evaporate from her mind when she spots Gale.

He's wearing his boots, the ones he normally wore when he and Katniss dropped strawberries off to her a lifetime ago. There's a little smirk on his lips as he takes in her doughy eyed, bed-headed, and rumpled appearance.

Fighting the urge to run back up the stairs, Madge slowly walks to the counter, makes sure the little island is between the two of them.

She isn't certain, but she guesses he's here because she missed the scores, scores she had advanced knowledge of last year. He'll know she knew them again this year and he'll be angry with her, she just knows it, for not getting to the Everdeens', not giving them warning.

"Prim said you were supposed to come by for the scores." He says it calmly, but his eyes flicker.

"Something came up." She hopes he catches her tone, the anxiety in her voice and eyes.

They can't talk, she can't tell him that they're tumbling further down the hole Peeta and Katniss had started digging when they won their Game.

His eyes narrow, glance around the room. He gets it and she's instantly relieved he isn't going to argue with her, make her show her cards.

For a minute he gnaws on his cheek, likely coming up with his own veiled question. He doesn't seem to be able to, though, and lets out a long sigh.

"You coming to the interviews tonight?"

Of course she is. It's mandatory.

She nods.

"Come stand with us," he forces a small smile. "Vick missed you last night."

Despite the dire straits they're in, she laugh, and laughs, and laughs…

Her chest starts to hurt, she laughs so hard. The past two days worth of anxiety, fear, anticipation, bubble over at his little joke about his brother's little crush on her.

Suddenly, Gale's arms are around her, crushing her to his chest, fingers running through her hair as he murmurs soothing noises to her, trying to calm her, though she doesn't know why.

His shirt is damp against her cheek and she realizes why he's holding her. She's started crying again. Damn.

"It'll be okay," he tells her, a breathy whisper into her hair. She can smell his breakfast, something spicy, on his breath.

It won't be okay, though, she knows that. They've fallen over the precipice and it's only a matter of time until they hit the bottom. Everything is so complicated now, there are too many players in this Game, and as much as she's trying to understand it all, she's just seventeen. Part of her wants to curl up, next to her still slightly oblivious mother, and let the world burn around her. It isn't as if she owes any of it her concern.

Besides, what difference can one person make in the world?

Unless they're Katniss, Madge thinks the answer might be 'not much'.

Madgecertainly won't make much of a difference.

Her head shakes, silently trying to tell him it's all a lost cause, that they're all doomed. He doesn't seem to catch it though, just holds her tighter, rubs soothing circles on her back.

"Stand with us tonight, okay?"

Gale doesn't know any of that though, has only his blissful ignorance of all the machinations floating in the air around him. At any rate, he's got his anger and his family to fight for, to make a difference for. He has a purpose, a place in the world, at least for now. Madge never will, and she knows it.

She pulls back, wipes the tears from her face, and nods.

Why shouldn't she have a few more hours or days of what little happiness she can muster?

#######

Gale leaves after Madge promises to meet him and his family for the viewing. There's no point in him staying, she can't tell him anything, and that's what he wants, information.

A little bitterness settles in her mouth. That's all she's good for, information.

For Katniss and Peeta. For Gale. For her father.

Hot tears begin trailing down her cheeks again, stinging her eyes.

What had she done so wrong in life to earn such a lowly position? Didn't she matter for the sake of being herself?

It certainly didn't seem so.

"Don't cry, love."

Her mother drifts in, settles down on her comforter and gives Madge a soft smile.

"Things will get better," she says with an airy sort of certainty.

"No, mother, they won't," she snaps. Instantly she feels her heart sink. Her mother is only trying to comfort her, and she probably honestly believes things will improve. She only has the vaguest idea of what is going on.

"I suppose you're right," her mother sighs.

Madge frowns, "What?"

A small smile tugs up on her mother's lips, the traces of her faded beauty flickering through, "Haymitch isn't coming home. He told me goodbye." She picks at a spot on the comforter, "Or maybe he is and I won't be here. I'm not sure."

It always amazes Madge how much her mother picks up. Or perhaps Mr. Abernathy had told her something, he had an inside track, though it would be a stupid move to tell someone as constantly hazy as her mother anything.

Either way, she's hit the truth of their numbered days on the head. They won't be seeing him, probably ever again.

#######

"She burns so well doesn't she, Val?"Madge's mother sighs airily.

She's managed to leave the house to accompany Madge to the interviews, smiles and laughs at the plainly furious Victors. It seems she understand their anger so much better than anyone else, nods in agreement to each of their treasonous speeches. Madge wishes her father had been allowed to come, help her brush off the odd stares her mother receives, but Thread had 'asked' him to help one of the new officials go over some paperwork to open up some of the closed mine shafts.

"He's just trying to catch us in a lie," her father told her that morning in the garden, just barely a whisper. "He won't though."

When Katniss comes on stage, dressed in her gown for a wedding that will never happen, she seems to anticipate the disaster brewing under the beautiful surface.

"What? I don't understand," Prim frowns, turns to Gale. "What happened to her dress?"

Madge's mother smiles serenely, doesn't take her eyes from the screen, "She's a mockingjay."

And she is. Just like her pin, the pin Madge had given to her, not anticipating what danger it would create.

The crowd starts moving around them, murmuring with confusion. They don't understand the significance of their Victor's transformation, but they sense something.

They're still shuffling, confused, when Peeta takes the stage, drops a bomb no one could have anticipated.

Katniss is pregnant.

Madge is almost positive it's a lie, something Peeta has concocted in his brilliant mind to throw off the Capitol's stride, its plan to end its Victors. Instantly, almost involuntarily, Madge's eyes flicker to Gale, wondering if he knows it isn't true, that the girl he's so in love with isn't carrying another man's child. He simply stares, though, his face giving away nothing.

The crowd, both on the screen and in the Square, are in shambles. There's yelling on the screen, the Capitolites are in hysterics, a larger scale version of what the little troop that had been in Twelve last year had done. The people of Twelve seem poised to follow suit. Madge gets pummeled, pulled from the group.

Katniss, their Victor, is pregnant. To send her back into the Arena is unthinkable, cruel, even by Capitol standards.

People are yelling, screaming, something flies through the air, glass shatters, sprays out. Madge feels tiny shards hit her, tastes blood on her lip.

Then a shot fires off, silencing them.

"QUIET!"

The flood of people, just moments earlier in a whirlwind, are instantly silent, still.

Thread is up on a platform. He has a gun lifted high above his head as he glares out, a cold smile on his face, eyes glittering in the dying sun.

"Everyone will return to their homes," he tells them coolly, his voice never rising. It's as if he's having a conversation with the entire District. "The Mines will remain closed until after the bloodbath."

He fires another shot, letting them know he means what he says and that if anyone steps so much as a toe out of line he won't hesitate to put them down.

Madge turns, desperate to find her mother.

She tries to push through the crowd, now flooding out of the Square, when a hand catches her as she gets pushed down one of the off shooting roads.

Turning, she finds Emmer, pulling her from the crush of people, over to the bakery.

"I have to find my mo-"

Before she can finish the sentence her eyes land on her mother, clinging to Gale's arm.

They're all huddled in the bakery, in the front room. Posy has her face pressed to the glass case with the display of cookies in it.

"You okay?" Emmer asks as he hands her a cloth, motions for her to wipe her mouth.

She's too stunned by how things have gone to say anything, just nods.

"Oh, love, look at your lip," her mother lets go of Gale, comes to Madge, reaches out and dabs her lip with the cloth.

"He really knows how to get a party started, huh?" Rhys says. He's by the window, watching the still frightened crowd disperse.

Emmer nods and glances at Gale, probably expecting him to say something, but he only receives a glare.

For a moment Madge doesn't know who they're talking about, and then it hits her.

Peeta.

She suddenly feels like a very poor friend, so wrapped up in her own sorrows, her own broken heart that she hadn't done much checking up on the Mellark boys. Just like she'd missed the cues with Peeta and Katniss' faltering relationship, she'd missed the pain Peeta's brothers had been suffering through.

"It isn't true, you know?" Emmer says suddenly, his eyes still on Gale. "She's no more pregnant than Madge."

He's never been the most comforting person, Madge knows that, but he's making the attempt. Like Peeta, he's trying to comfort, but in his own way. Emmer, like most of the District, knows Gale loves Katniss, and his good heart won't let him allow Gale to think something so untrue if it's going to cause him pain.

Madge shoots him a small smile, a flicker of laughter at the little joke at her expense.

Gale just nods, crosses his arms over his chest and glares out the window, watching for an opening to leave.

"Why would he say she was knocked up if she isn't?" Rory asks, plopping down at the little dessert table chair next to where Madge is standing.

For a moment Madge is quiet, unsure if this is a safe topic to discuss. The people who matter, the ones that had fixed the Games, the Reaping, the ones who are listening in, are probably already perfectly aware that Katniss isn't pregnant, that this is a ploy by Peeta. Nothing Madge says, none of her conjectures, or in their eyes affirmations, will make any difference other than to make it look like she had a hand in concocting the lie. Somehow Madge doesn't think any of it makes a difference to her now.

"Because," she begins carefully, "it'll create outrage. Those people in the Capitol were already upset about losing their beloved Victors, add onto that not getting their much anticipated wedding and now a baby, they'll be beyond inconsolable. There'll be trouble."

That's the only way to change things, upset the citizens of the Capitol, and Peeta has fanned the flames under them to make them boil over.

"They might change the rules," Prim perks up, her blue eyes shining. "They'll change the rules and send them all home?"

Madge shakes her head, "No. They've already been proven fallible once." Katniss' trick with the berries was a hard slap in the face. An insult beyond all the revolts. "They won't let anyone, especially not Peeta or Katniss, get them to blink again."

Vick flops next to Rory, turns his wide gray eyes up to Madge, "Then why bother?"

That she can't say out loud.

She's finally pieced all the letters she and her father had burned together, all the notes and papers, Peeta has helped her paste the disjointed puzzle into a picture.

This isn't about saving the Victors, it's not about saving the Districts, it's about taking the Capitol down.

"Two Victors would prove they can be manipulated, even by the lowliest of us. They won't stand for it."

And the Capitol most certainly isn't standing for it. It isn't going to go down without a fight. Katniss and Peeta had shown the Capitol's weakness and now those really in charge are lashing out.

Sacrifices will be made, and Madge is fairly certain Twelve and its Victors will be offered at the altar, perhaps as martyrs, a rally point for the others. Katniss is already the face of rebellion, she gave her fire to the battered people of the Districts. Now they're going to burn her, Peeta, all of Twelve, to feed the flames and keep the fire blazing.

All the plans, years, perhaps decades, in the making, are being pulled out, dusted off and read. Anyone with a rebellious bone in their body, that's had the ability to connect with those outside their District, is readying themselves for a fight.

#######

There is no recap of the interviews. Madge wouldn't be surprised if they destroyed every copy of the show in existence.

Madge's father is 'allowed' to attend the bloodbath. Seeing as the District was no more well behaved in his absence than in his presence, Thread must've realized her father isn't the one moving the pieces in the District. No one is.

Prim is pale, clinging to her mother and Gale as the screen flickers to life.

"It's an ocean," Madge's mother sighs.

"Have you seen the ocean before, Mrs. Undersee?" Vick asks, squinting up at the cool sun overhead.

She shakes her head, pale blonde hair floating with the motion.

"Then how do you know?" Rory frowns at her, giving her a scowl worthy of his older brother. "It might just be a lake."

Madge's mother gives him one of her serene, infuriating smiles, "No, dear, it can't be."

Gale must hear them. He doesn't turn, doesn't take his eyes from Katniss on the screen, but he voices his own question, his tone edging with irritation at her vagueness. "Why can't it be, Mrs. Undersee?"

"Because," she sighs, "they won't be able to drink it if it's the ocean."

Saltwater. It's so simple, so devastating. Water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.

The lack of water, or the abundance of undrinkable water, is quickly pushed to the backs of their minds, though, once the fighting starts.

It seems to go by in a flurry, which only makes sense. These are seasoned killers, not children with shiny toys. Madge loses track of who is killed and who does the killing. She honestly doesn't want to know.

Before they know it, the cameras are following Katniss, Peeta, the elderly lady from Four, from a Game so long ago it's mostly been forgotten, and, to everyone's great surprise, Finnick Odair.

They vanish into what Madge recognizes from her childhood picture books, a birthday gift from Mr. Abernathy, as a jungle. It's dark, probably hotter than it appears, full of tangled vines and roots.

There's a tense moment, between Finnick Odair and Katniss, but Peeta diffuses it, easily, succinctly, and they move on to the more pressing issue. Water.

They walk on, deeper into the artificial jungle for what feels like ages, but there's no sign of water anywhere.

Vick and Posy begin to get antsy, as do most of the younger children being forced to watch in the Square.

Any other year and the Peacekeepers would've ignored them. They all had been that age before, knew the limited attention span children had. This year is different though. This year Thread has his cold eyes on the crowd, watching for misbehavior, practically thirsting for it.

They slither through the crowd, little switches in their hands, swatting any children that sit down or begin to drift into such terrible offences as pushing a sibling. Any parent that takes up for them is swiftly carted off to the newly expanded stocks to be taught a lesson on child rearing.

Thread is being petty now, picking on the littlest of the District simply because he can.

"How can he do this?" Gale's face is pulled back in disgust at the sight of the crying children of one of his crew members, clinging to their mother, as their father is dragged away.

Madge's father sighs, rubs his worn hands over his forehead. "He's been given full authority. All I am is a figurehead, for the time being anyway."

It's a bitter pill to swallow, hearing what she'd already known for weeks come out of her father's mouth. They are at the mercy of a madman, and there's no one that can help them.

Their attention is pulled back to the screen when Katniss calls out and Peeta is thrown through the air.

He's dead.

Peeta is limp on the ground as Katniss, in a frantic, terror filled frenzy, screams his name.

Finnick Odair comes into the scene, pushes her, hard, out of the way. Then, in what Madge thinks may be the strangest scene ever played out in any Game, Finnick begins-

"Uh, is he kissing,Peeta?" Vick looks monumentally confused.

Posy begins giggling into her mother's side, "He is!"

Rory, normally quick with an inappropriate comment, is too shocked to even make a face at the display.

Gale's eyebrows shoot up and his eyes flicker from his mother to Madge, as if asking 'What exactly are we seeing?'

Even the Peacekeepers stop their juvenile swatting and stare up at the screen, trying to figure out when the Games became a sordid Capitol program.

"He isn't kissing him," Katniss' mother chuckles. "He's revivinghim."

Prim's eyebrows scrunch together in thought, then her face brightens, "Do you think it'll work, mom?"

The words have no sooner passed her lips than Peeta coughs, comes back from the land of the dead to be assaulted by his supposedly pregnant fiancée.

As Katniss hugs Peeta, reassures herself of his being alive, and sobs a sticky mess all over him, Madge keeps her eyes on Gale.

His jaw tenses, she can almost imagine him chewing his tongue at the display, swallowing down blood and bile at having to watch them. No words pass his lips though; they stay tightly pressed together as he hugs the happily crying Prim.

#######

They're trapped in the Square for several more hours, listening to Katniss make insinuations about the doctors that fixed her ear as the reason for her knowledge about the force field.

Howdidshe know? It perplexes Madge. She doesn't buy that Katniss has magical hearing. Katniss isn't stupid, but she's certainly not as clever as Peeta, and Madge thinks bitterly, not nearly as clever as Madge. How did Katniss know the force field was there?

When the cannons finally fire, eight dead, they let those that haven't been carted off head for their homes.

Gale, his family, and the Everdeens are invited by Madge's mother to come to their house, have some celebratory ice cream.

"Your children helped make it, Hazelle-dear."

Mrs. Hawthorne chuckles, "I noticed."

"I suppose it can't hurt," Mrs. Everdeen says, eliciting a happy noise from Prim.

With Vick and Rory leading the way, they all carefully make their way to the Mayor's house, watchful of Peacekeepers the entire way.

The moment they open the gate Madge senses something is off. The door is locked, she hears the reassuring click as her father unlocks the kitchen door, and nothing has been moved when they enter the kitchen and Mrs. Hawthorne scolds her children as they race to the icebox. Still, there's something amiss, Madge just can't spot it.

Then something pokes her in the back.

She nearly jumps out of her skin, lets out a scream and lunges at Gale, pushing him away from the attack.

Someone, a girl, starts laughing.

Birdy Alameda steps out of the dark hallway Madge had been backed up to, still laughing at the noise that had come out of Madge's mouth.

She turns her mirthful eyes to Gale, gives him a wink, "Miss me, Dorothy?"


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine.
> 
> AN: Thanks to FortuneFaded2012 for beta'ing.

For several stunned seconds the group stares at her, not really sure what they're seeing.

She's darker. Birdy's skin has a warm tan across it, or maybe it always had and the lurid tones of her hair and makeup had simply washed it out of her before. Like on the television, she's lost her shine. Her hair is a murky blonde, not curled or twisted up in an intricate bun or braid, but loose and stringy. The dress she's wearing is dull, simple as the one Madge has on, in a muddy brown color. Madge squints at her, trying to detect painted makeup on her, but it too has vanished. Even the green on her lips is gone, and Madge had been certain they were tattooed.

If they'd passed her on the street Madge might not have even recognized her.

She's lost her gaudy plumage, turned back into the plain little girl from her Reaping, and Madge wonders if she plucked herself, or if this had been a forced molting.

Madge blinks her vision clear. This isn't the time to wonder about those things.

She had expected the little Victor, sooner than last year, but not the second the bloodbath ended.

Gale growls. Madge feels his hand catch at her waist; pull her closer to him and away from the perceived threat. "What're you doing here?"

Birdy shrugs. She pads past them to Madge's mother, puts down the glass in her hand, gently slides the metal container with the ice cream from her and begins helping herself, scooping large spoonfuls into a blue-patterned bowl. She picks up her glass, swirls the liquid around before taking a long drink. Apparently she'd found Madge's father's liquor cabinet.

"I just missed your witty repertoire," her eyes roll at the statement. "Honestly, how dense are you? Why do you think I'm here?"

Madge's father intervenes, probably sensing another bloodbath brewing in his kitchen.

"It's earlier than we anticipated, that's all," he explains. His even expression never falters, "Shouldn't you be mentoring?"

Birdy scowls, "Only need one Mentor for each Tribute. I'm considered 'unnecessary', strategically speaking."

There's more to it, Madge can sense that, but her mouth stays clamped shut.

"Let Madgie go, Dorothy," Birdy tells him, eyes narrowing on Gale's fingers digging into Madge's side. "You hurt her again, and I'll make Thread look like the pitchfork carrying peasant he is."

Gale makes a noise, a low grunt deep in his chest, but with a look from his family, the Everdeens, and Madge, he loosens his grip. His hand doesn't drop though. It stays protectively at Madge's side.

His lip curls up and Madge instantly knows he's about to do something monumentally stupid.

"You're a real Victor, you know that?" He takes a step, between Madge and Birdy. "Your friends die on live television and you don't even care. Head out of town and break into peoples' houses to have yourself dessert and a nightcap."

For a few seconds nothing happens. Birdy simply stares at him, studying every inch of his face.

Then, before any of them know it's even happened, Gale is on his back, hitting the floor with a thud. The glass in Birdy's hand falls to the floor and explodes into a thousand dazzling shards. Birdy grabs one of Mrs. Oberst's wooden spoons, has it tight in both hands, her knuckles paling as she takes it and leaps onto Gale, using the long handle of the spoon to choke him.

He sputters and struggles against her, but she has her knee in his groin, using it to keep him from fighting too much.

Posy starts screaming and her mother and brothers try to comfort her, though they look utterly at a loss as to what to do. Prim starts to sob, begins begging Birdy to 'Please stop'.

Mostly because Madge thinks Birdy won't hurt her, she dives at the Victor. She won't let her kill Gale.

They roll off Gale, tumble into the doors to the pantry with a crack.

Eyes widening, still lolling a little, Birdy makes an irritated noise.

"Are you trying to get on my bad side, Madgie?"

Gale, still sputtering and trying to catch his breath, growls from behind Madge, "You have a good side?"

Shut up, Gale!

Did nearly becoming the victim of a kitchen utensil homicide not teach him anything?

Birdy pushes herself up, looks to be deciding how slow and painful she wants Gale's death to be, when she starts laughing again.

"You are a slow learner, you know that?"

She shakes her head, as though she'd just been involved in nothing more interesting than a schoolyard scuffle.

Birdy reaches down, hauls Madge from the floor by the collar and lets her stumble back into her mother, before grabbing Gale by the hair.

Her little dagger, the one she'd threatened him with last year, the one she'd used to euthanize her District partner with, is out, the flat blade pressed to Gale's neck. Madge can see his pulse thrumming under the glinting metal.

"I should've killed you last year. Saved us all a lot of trouble." She adds a little pressure to the blade, pushes it closer against Gale's skin. Her expression shifts, her wicked grin reemerges, "Oh, Katniss, I love you".

The color drains from Gale's face as Birdy's twittering laugher fills the kitchen.

Her laughter continues, "Oh, Dorothy, did you think they wouldn't know? That I wouldn't know? It's my job to know these things. It's my job to find the chinks in other Victor's armor." She tilts her head, "And believe me, there are more than a few in Miss Everdeen's."

With a forceful shove, Gale hits the wall. Birdy drops her hand, the one holding her dagger, and sneers at him. She raises it again, gestures with it, giving him a dark look.

"This is all your fault, you know that right?" There's a bite in her tone, a bitter edge, that hadn't been there last year, even when she'd been threatening Gale.

"You could have any girl in this backwards District, but you chose the one you can't have. You're infinite stupidity sent her back into the Arena. Which, if you recall, I worked damn hard to get her out of. You, you entitled little brat, are the reason that she might die. And don't think I won't dance on her grave if she does, baby and all." She's shaking now, Madge can see a glimmer in her eyes, "You as good as killed my friends. So don't you dare tell me I don't care. I care a hell of a lot more than you."

The knife drops again. She stuffs it into her dress before turning to the stunned onlookers, false smile back on her lips.

"So, how has everyone been?"

Prim is the first to find her voice. She gives Birdy a weary smile, "Oh, fine." She bites her lower lip, chews it, "If you don't mind my asking, why are you here so soon?"

Birdy tilts her head, considering the question, then points to the three youngest Hawthornes, "I brought some chocolate from the Capitol. In my bags in the living room. You three go and get it."

Posy squeals, runs off without question, but Rory and Vick stay planted by their mother's side.

"Go," Birdy tells them again, making a shooing motion with her hands.

"You're going to talk about something," Vick tells her. "We should get to hear too."

"I'm almost as old as Prim," Rory adds.

"Don't you know girls mature faster than boys?" She gestures to Gale, "Look at your brother, judging by how he acts, I'd say he's no more than ten or eleven. Which makes you two roughly your sister's age. So go."

Their mother gives them a little push, "Someone needs to watch your sister."

"I can do it."

Madge's mother floats to the entryway, toward the hall, and turns to Mrs. Hawthorne, "I can watch the little one and they can listen to the girl. She talks in riddles anyway. I don't want to hear them."

Before either Madge or her father can point out to her that Posy would probably watch her better than she could ever watch Posy, Madge's mother has glided out of the room.

"Hm," Birdy grunts. "She's still crazy, I see."

Madge starts to say something, opens her mouth, and Gale makes a threatening grunting noise, but Birdy just waves them off.

"I know, I know, I'm a witch."

#######

They crowd around the tiny table in the breakfast nook. Birdy brings her bowl of ice cream and starts eating, ignoring the worried stares around her.

"Are you going to tell us why you've graced us with your presence so early this year or not?" Gale finally snaps. His mother's eyes widen in terror, jump back and forth between her son and the Victor.

Birdy sets the bowl down, wipes some blueberry from her lips, then sighs, "They want footage of the families." Her nose wrinkles up, "Lots, apparently. They like a good show, and the deaths of the 'Star-crossed pains in the ass' from District Twelve are going to be one of the biggest shows for years to come."

Mrs. Everdeen pales, "But they could win-"

"No, they can't," Birdy cuts her off. "This year, the only option those two have is to come home in a custom made pine box from Seven. I've suggested the silk lined."

"But…" Prim starts shaking. "That's not fair! They should have a chance!"

"Since when is the Capitol concerned with fair?"

Never. At least not as far as Madge has ever been aware.

"These Games were designed to rid them of as many 'problem children' as possible." She starts playing with her melting ice cream, slapping at it with her spoon. "Odair, Mason, Chaff, Seeder, Abernathy, and, of course, the ever charming Miss Everdeen, just to name a few. Everyone else Reaped is just collateral damage."

Madge freezes in her seat, eyes jerking around the room. "Should you be…" She makes a gesture to her mouth, forms the words 'talking about this'.

Birdy's wicked grin lights up her face.

"I'm a great many things, but stupid isn't one of them, Madgie." She sits back in her chair, waves her hand at the house in general, "I've spent the last few hours recoding the bugs in your house. They are now broadcasting the home life of the ever so gracious Mayor Stahl of District Ten. He volunteered."

For what feels like the first time in a short lifetime, Madge feels a weight lifted from her shoulders. Her home isn't infested with Capitol ears.

"So," Birdy licks the ice cream from her spoon, "we have until they come for me to get this place ready."

Madge's father frowns; he looks suddenly so much older, "Ready for what?"

"The end." She shrugs, as though she hasn't just placed a certain finality on all their lives.

"Heavensbee says it'll be a few days at most, maybe less. He's a sharp man, and his apartment has a great view." Birdy sighs. "I'm the canary in this coal mine, Mayor. When they come and stop my singing, you had best clear out."

"If they wanted to 'stop your singing' why didn't they just send you into the Games?" Madge finally asks.

It's bothered her for days, made her question Birdy's intentions, made Madge doubt her own judgment.

Several long moments later, after slapping at the now milky mess in her bowl, Birdy gives her a sad smile.

"Because they think they clipped my wings ages ago, but they don't know much about animals like me." She gives the table a rueful glance, "Plus, I have a very practical use. I'm the one they send out to gather information for them. They're going to kill me, just as sure as they're going to kill the others, but they want to get all the use out of me they can. We Victors are the bridges to the gap between them and the Districts."

It makes sense now, why the Capitol would sacrifice its beloved Victors.

They have too much power, too much sway.

"… if I want to, if I choose to, I can rile them up. I can have them demand he favor the boy. I've had years to perfect this art, Magdalene."

The Capitol, its citizens, put too much stock in them. Birdy and the other Victors have sway over them; they've learned to control them, just as they've been controlled for years.

The Victors have found the chink in the Capitol's armor. They've adapted, grown into the chaos of the world they were thrust into, and are too close to controlling it.

"Probably could've made it a few more years, planned this a little better, but our hand has been forced." She scowls at Gale. "You and that idiot girl couldn't control your baser urges and now we're all about to have to fight in a countrywide bloodbath."

It's stupid, that Birdy's revelation about Gale and Katniss stings so much. It does though. A piece of Madge's heart chips off, tumbles into her stomach.

"Baser urges?" Gale's eyes narrow. "I kissed her-"

"And you plotted to run away."

Gale freezes. He might've guessed they'd known about the kiss, but any talk of taking off, disappearing into the woods he must've thought was safe. "How-"

"I know everything," Birdy tells him simply. "I know what detergent your mother uses. I know which mine shaft you're going to be sent into. I know the name of every girl you've taken up to the 'slag heap', even though I don't know what a 'slag heap' is. I know how many slips of paper have your brother's name on them next year." She leans across the table, eyes fixed on him, "Everything."

#######

Birdy tells the Hawthornes and Everdeens to leave after that.

"I need a break from your overwhelming stupidity."

Despite wanting to go upstairs, cry her crumbling heart out on her Gale scented pillow, Madge gathers up Posy and walks the families out.

"Be back, bright and early tomorrow," Birdy yells at them as she scoops herself out another helping of ice cream.

Gale, who is bringing up the tail end of the groups, shoots Madge a look.

"How do you stand being around people like her all the time?"

He thinks Birdy is the worst of the worst, a being that just barely rates above a rotting carcass. Both are vile in his mind, useless and potentially hazardous.

Gale doesn't see how similar he and the girl he dislikes so much are.

Both he and Birdy are powerful, have a sway over people. Both have the ability to do damage to people, more than the average.

But Birdy at least knows her power. Or Madge thinks she does. She realizes she hurts people. She knows the damage she's causing, the danger she carries in her wake.

Gale doesn't. He doesn't sense the danger, see the damage, know all the potential he has to be so much more destructive than Birdy ever will.

She has the reins pulled tight on her propensities, her bad habits. She tries to prepare people and soften the inevitable blow. Gale hasn't quite learned that skill.

"You learn to smile through everything when you're a politician's child," she finally tells him. A tight smile involuntarily finds its way onto her face. He's done her damage, and he doesn't know. He wouldn't care if he did. "You bite your tongue, you swallow down the bile, and you smile as brightly as you can. You never let them see you break."

He nods, frowns slightly, then chases after his family, out the gate and into the growing night.

#######

Madge follows her father and Birdy into his office after helping him put her mother to bed.

Someone, probably Birdy, has pulled the curtains shut, and Madge hears the faint click of the lock as her father shuts the door behind them.

"Tell us the rest," he tells Birdy as he collapses into his chair, behind his desk. "All of it."

Birdy flops, sideways, into one of the winged back chairs in front of him, her legs dangling over the armrest. She sighs.

"You aren't going to want to hear it."

"We need to," he tells her sharply.

"Fine," Birdy groans.

It occurs to Madge that Birdy is only a little older than her, only slightly older than Gale even. Madge imagines Birdy, with her childish sprawl in the chair, as a reckless teenager being told off by her irritable father.

After a moment of thought, Birdy turns in the chair, poises herself for what looks to be a painful confessional.

When she starts Madge doesn't know what to think.

"We've been planning this for ages. Since before my Games."

They would cultivate a Tribute, someone the Districts and the Capitol both would rally around, earn them the place in the hierarchy of Victors. Then use their place, their popularity, to bloodlessly overthrow the government.

"I was so good at manipulating the Capitol audience, it was seamless how good I was." She rubs her eyes. "The other Victors asked me to help them, during the Seventieth, to get the girl out, Cresta." Birdy laughs, "I thought it was a big joke, you know? She was a disaster, a wreck. I thought it was going to be a slap in the face of those pigs. Giving them a mad Victor, one they couldn't, wouldn't want to, play with."

It hadn't been a joke though; it was part of a long con. A dry run.

"I was so stupid. Even when I realized what they were having me do, I kept doing it." She gets up, walks to the liquor cabinet and pulls out a bottle of something honey colored. Popping the glass stopper, letting it fall to the floor with a thud, Birdy takes a long swallow of it, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand before continuing.

"The next year, I went with Wiress, she was always so nice to me. We got assigned to Seven, she manipulated the lottery that picked where we went, see? The others had been watching Mason, and decided to try again."

This time, though, it would be with what they saw as a very clever Victor. Johanna Mason wasn't a leggy, gorgeous thing, like so many of the other female Victors. She was cunning and devious, and the other Victors decided they needed to see if they could get someone like her, someone that could help them manipulate the Capitol without being consumed by the fire.

"It was so much easier to control Mason's family. They were so sweet, just wanted their girl to come home." Birdy shakes her head, presses her fingers to her eyes. "And I helped them do just that. My team and I dolled them up, made them shine, told them what to say and how to say it, we helped them help her."

"Wiress, she taught me everything I know about audiovisuals and deciphering information. She was right there beside me when Mason finally won."

She twists her lips up, into a mirthless smile, "When we got back to the Capitol, for the review of the Games, they took us into custody. Not just Wiress and I, but my prep team to." Her voice cracks, "We were under wraps for months. Tortured Wiress and I, shot Ursula, Patrice, Dionyza, and Bianca, right in front of me. They didn't even know anything. It was like slaughtering newborn birds. They were blind and flightless and helpless, and so-so scared." She bats a few tears from her cheeks, "Then they shot Lineus, my District escort. He wasn't even in Seven. They just did it to be cruel."

Birdy drops into the chair again, lets the glass bottle dangle between her fingers as she stares down at the pattern on Madge's father's rug.

"When this girl came into the picture," she closes her eyes, lets out a long, pained breath, "they saw that spark in her, the one they'd thought they'd have to build. She inspired hope in people, probably because they didn't notice she's about as sharp as a brick. We weren't ready though. Not even close. There was so much planning that needed to be done. They wanted what they wanted though, were afraid they wouldn't get the opportunity again." She shrugs, "So, we moved quickly, messily, and, since we placed all our hopes and aspirations on such an unreliable piece, we are now stuck playing a much more dangerous Game than we'd ever intended."

"If that damn girl and that lobotomized amoeba masquerading as a functional human being had any sense, we could still have done this so much less messily." She takes another drink of the amber liquid, "But we made a stupid move, so here we are."

"What's going to happen?" Madge asks, choosing to ignore the slight against Gale. She doesn't know what she wants to hear.

"You can't tell the boy, not until the end. He's a glory hound. Likes to take care of things. You let this slip to him before the moment is right and he'll be the death of us all." She shrugs, "Well, an earlier death anyway."

#######

The Mayor from Ten, a dark skinned man, bald, appeared on the television in the office the moment Birdy put her tube of lip gloss into a cable outlet.

"I love District Three, such a fun bunch," she grins at her Mayor.

"We think it'll be a bombing," Mayor Stahl tells them. He's in what appears to be his office. His wife, a tall, elegant looking woman with dark curls and glittering eyes is behind him, holding a compact, apparently blocking the Capitol from hearing the conversation. "We've got men in the woods to your west, ready with the signals when they come."

It's apparent now,clear as the sun in the sky, that there's no way District Twelve will be allowed to survive. They've provided the rebellious Victors, and who knows who else, with a means to overthrow them. They'll eradicate the entire District as a warning.

"Have you had any luck with the wiring?" Madge's father asks.

Mayor Stahl shakes his head, "It's a protective measure, I'm afraid. They've got it rigged up so that no matter what, turning it off can't be done safely."

Madge frowns at her father. What is he talking about?

He'd asked her for a book on wiring from the library, ages ago, when Gale had been whipped, but she hadn't thought much of it since them.

With a grim expression, Madge's father nods, "So be it."

Mayor Stahl and his wife exchange a look, but say nothing.

"Keep your eyes on the sky." Stahl's wife tells them. "And listen to your canary. We have a pretty good idea that it'll come when they take her away." She frowns at Birdy, "And be careful."

Birdy snorts. "Careful? Don't worry about me Mrs. Stahl. I know exactly what I'm doing."

#######

Madge helps Birdy carry her bags, only two, just enough for a short stay, up to her room.

"Did you kill the Glaives?"

Birdy's eyebrows arch, "Do you think I did?"

Madge nods.

"Well," Birdy kicks her suitcase to the wall, "you wouldn't be wrong."

"Please tell me you didn't do it just so your friend could get an apartment." Madge doesn't think she can stomach the thought. Even as awful as the siblings had been, killing them for property is stomach turning.

"Not entirely. Though that was a lovely fringe benefit." She scowls, "And Heavensbee isn't anyone's friend."

Flopping onto the bed, she sighs, "I killed them because they were terrible people. Worse than me, if you can believe that. I don't see it as a bad thing. I might've saved people by killing them."

The bed dips as Madge sits next to her, "Would you really have killed Gale?"

Birdy doesn't even hesitate, "In a heartbeat." She sits up, "I might've saved my friends if I had."

The other Victors, her friends, might still be alive if Birdy had taken Gale out last year. They could've avoided kissing and talks of running away, avoided revolts and deaths, avoided what is surely coming their way in a few days.

Madge just nods, gets up, and starts for the door.

"She didn't say it back," Birdy says suddenly, when Madge is a footstep from the hallway. "Everdeen, I mean. She didn't say she loved him back."

She must think that might make Madge feel better, but really, it doesn't.

Katniss is confused. Too much has happened, too quickly. She isn't the perfect Tribute, molded by the invisible hand that decided she would be the beacon for the Districts. She's a seventeen year old girl, just like Madge.

Just because Katniss didn't say she loved him back, didn't mean anything.

"She does though," Madge finally says, just above a whisper. "He loves her, and someday, somehow, they'll be together. She's the important one and I'm just going to be a faded memory."

Even without careful crafting, Katniss is the essential part of the Game, for Gale, and for the entire country.

The bed creaks, Birdy's bare feet pad quickly across the floor, and before Madge knows what she's doing, she's flung her arms around her neck.

"We'll all just be faded memories someday, Magdalene. That doesn't mean we aren't important."


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine.
> 
> AN: Thanks to FortuneFaded2012 for beta'ing.

Tired, right down to her bones, Madge goes to her room and finds a shadow casting in from outside her window.

Quietly, she pads over and pulls it open.

"Gale?" She squints at him in the moonlight. "What are you doing here?"

His eyes are red rimmed, blurry, and there's an all too familiar droop to his face.

"She's going to choose him," he says finally. His face turns up to the moon, bathes him in a silver light. "She's going to die for him."

Madge gestures for him to come in; she doesn't want any prowling Peacekeepers to find him sitting on her roof.

A little clumsily, exhaustion and drink again she assumes, he tumbles in, but doesn't make a sound when he rolls onto the floor.

Once she gets him up, walks him to the side of her bed, they both sit.

"Gale, Peeta will get Katniss to fight for her life, not his."

"Doesn't matter," he shakes his head. "Did you see how she acted when she thought he was dead?" He snorts, "Throwing herself on him." Gale makes a noise and Madge almost laughs. "If Odair and the old woman hadn't been there who knows what we'd have seen."

"Not much," Madge assures him. "They have special pay channels for that kind of thing. Wouldn't want it on national airwaves and not get compensation."

She's trying to get a smile out of him, but it doesn't work. He just stares at the wall across from them in stony silence.

Finally, when Madge takes his hand, gives it a reassuring squeeze, he snaps out of it. He turns and gives her an almost desperate look.

"Can I stay here tonight?"

He's exhausted, but as far as she'd been able to tell, her initial guess that he was also a little drunk isn't true.

"It isn't fair to ask…" He runs a hand over his face, rethinks what he's saying. His gray eyes seem to glow as he settles them on her. "I just sleep better when I'm here, and I need sleep."

Gale is seeking some kind of affirmation of his worth as a person, she supposes. Katniss, at least in his mind, is passing him over. Her clear affection for Peeta, whatever form that may be, is putting a strain on him, breaking his sense of self worth. Watching her sob over Peeta's lifeless body, her panic, and then relief at his revival has cost Gale something deep within himself. It makes his baiting Birdy a little more understandable. He might've thought a fight would bleed out some of his hurt. Apparently he was wrong.

Madge can't turn him out though, and not just because of the Peacekeepers. Somewhere, in the cruel recesses of his mind, he knows that. He wouldn't ask otherwise.

Even if Madge isn't the warm body he's seeking at his side, the one he wants, she's the one there. He could've sought any girl, gotten more than just a night's rest, but he's come to Madge. She's his security blanket, and she's far too happy for that title.

Getting up, she takes a chair and props it against the door. Birdy may already know about Madge's midnight visits, might even know about this one, but Madge has no desire to have her run in, knife held high, and flay Gale where he sleeps.

"Take off your boots," she tells him.

Her bed is big enough for the both of them, but when Gale gives her a tug to the bed, less roughly than he had months before, she shakes her head again.

"Please," he whispers. "I'll stay on my side. I promise."

Madge sighs, rubs her hands over her face. She doesn't have time for this. "Why Gale?"

He swallows. She watches his Adam's apple bob, sees his eyes close. "I can't see you when you're over in that chair." His lips press into a line, "I wake up and wonder where you are…You make me feel safe."

A sharp pain stabs at the back of her sternum. She can't tell him 'no' now. Damn him.

Carefully she positions herself at the far edge of the mattress; lets Gale have the other half of the bed.

It only takes a few minutes to fall asleep. She's exhausted, emotionally and physically, and her mind shuts down.

She wakes, though, when she feels an unfamiliar weight on her body.

Her eyes fly open and she finds dark hair in her face.

Gale's cheek is at the top of her sternum. He's almost stomach to stomach with her, arms wrapped tight around her, one hand between her shoulders and one resting on her waist.

Madge almost pushes him off, he'd lied about staying on his side of the bed in brilliant fashion, but doesn't. His face is so much more relaxed than it had been. He looks far too peaceful for her to ruin it.

Instead, she presses a kiss to his forehead and drifts off to sleep again.

#######

Madge sits up in the earliest morning light and finds Gale gone. She hadn't expected him to stay. He wouldn't want his family knowing he'd been out all night.

He comes back, though, along with his family, and the Everdeens. They show up, a few hours after the sun rises, same as the last Games, pressed and dressed in their finest. Gale doesn't breath a word of his previous night's sleeping arrangements. He doesn't so much as give Madge a bigger smile, and she feels a stone settle in her stomach.

She knows she shouldn't have expected him to, but it still stings.

Birdy slowly comes down the stair to meet them, but doesn't make them over, doesn't so much as take a comb to their hair.

"Where are the reporters?" Prim asks.

Madge had wondered that too. She'd expected them to make a racket, roll in, inebriated and loud, in the early morning. None came, though.

"They aren't coming," Birdy tells her. She waves absently at herself, "I'm it."

"Great," Gale mutters.

"Don't worry Dorothy, I'll be sure to use proper lighting on you and only shoot your good side," Birdy smirks.

Gale's mouth turns down, "I hate you."

"Hate you more," Birdy tells him cheerfully.

She produces a small camera, no bigger than her palm, does a few short shots, then goes to her room, telling Madge to 'give her a holler' when the Mellarks come.

"She's less help this year than last," Gale mutters.

"She's doing all she can," Madge snaps. She won't let him criticize what may be her only real friend in the world.

Everyone quiets, Madge guesses it's because she so rarely is harsh with them, but she doesn't care. They're careening to a messy end and there's nothing they can do but wait.

She sinks to the couch, lets her eyes fall to the floor and over to the television.

Katniss and Peeta have teamed up with the pair from Three, one of which is the woman Birdy had mentioned, Wiress. She's more of a disaster than Madge's mother, talking nonsense and annoying the other woman, who it turns out, is Johanna Mason.

Gale watches in interest for a few minutes before turning back to Madge. He doesn't say anything else, though.

Vick drops into the seat next to her, leans his head on her shoulder. He's exhausted. They all are.

There are bags under their eyes, shadows of long, restless nights. Prim is thinner, despite her now steady diet. Compared to last year, they're all much worse for wear.

Mrs. Oberst comes in, leading the Mellarks to the back living area Madge, the Everdeens, and Hawthornes occupy.

"I'll get Phoebe," she tells them, without so much as giving any of them a glance.

They all stand, in thickly awkward silence, for several minutes before Rhys breaks the tension.

"You, uh, studying circuits?" He picks up one of Madge's father's book, earmarked and battered, he'd left on the table.

"Oh," Madge shakes her head, "no. My dad."

He nods, swallows thickly. "This is a very tense room." His eyes cut to Emmer, "Has someone elsedied?"

He probably means it as a joke, but it's painfully unfunny given the circumstances.

"Okay…" Rhys flops against the wall. Emmer rolls his eyes, mutters 'idiot', not quite under his breath.

Mrs. Mellark has her arms crossed tightly over her chest. She looks put out at the whole ordeal, as though she's being inconvenienced at being asked to possibly help her own son.

Madge's heart almost breaks for Mr. Mellark though. He's too sweet a man for this to be happening to. He has his hat rumpled and twisted in his pale hands. His wide eyes, red rimmed, are fixed on the television, taking in the last visions of his youngest son that he may ever get.

"Hello, Kolach," Madge hears her mother's airy voice float over her.

She glides down the stairs and looks around the room, seemingly shocked by the abundance of people in her living room. "Should I make tea?"

"They're fine, Mrs. Undersee," Birdy jumps down the stairs, taking them two at a time. "Save your tea. Never know when you might need it."

She puts a new chip, some new recording device, into the camera and points it at the Mellarks.

As she'd done only a few hours earlier, Birdy does a few shots, asks a few harmless questions, then dismisses the Mellarks.

She dashes back up the stairs, presumably to edit and send her snippets back to the Capitol, and Peeta's brothers both frown at her back.

"That was much less…intense than last year," Rhys says, giving Madge a quick look.

"Well, they aren't coming back," Mrs. Mellark snaps. "No reason to waste her time."

Emmer shrugs weakly, keeps his eyes on the ground, and Mr. Mellark goes a little paler at her statement.

"I'll see you out," Madge hears her mother tell them shortly after. She gives Mrs. Mellark a small look, just north of irritated, as she passes her.

When they've gone, Mrs. Everdeen sighs, "I suppose we should go too."

"I was hoping she'd come back down and tell us something," Prim tells Madge quietly as she stands to go.

Posy is just untangling herself from one of Madge's mother's afghans when the screaming starts.

It's faint, and at first Madge thinks someone is being tortured in the Square.

"Who is it?" Mrs. Everdeen runs to a window in a panic. She makes a frustrated noise when she realizes that despite being very near the Square, she can't see it without being in one of the upstairs rooms.

Visions of someone, a young girl by the sound of it, fill Madge's head. She sounds terrified. She sounds familiar.

Madge looks at the television. They've missed several hours, haven't been giving it much attention other than to note that Katniss and Peeta are still alive. It's turned down low, just barely audible.

With a flick of her wrist Madge turns the volume up and the scream fills the air.

"It's you, Prim."

The scream is familiar, it's a scream she'd hear just last night when Birdy had attacked Gale.

They watch, listen, all frozen in horror as each of their voices, Prim, Rory, Vick, Posy, Gale, and even Madge's fill the air, amplified to create the most blood-chilling effect possible.

"How?" Mrs. Everdeen asks no one.

Gale, however, has already caught on to the source of the screams.

He's already heading for the stairs, simmering with disdain, when Birdy comes bounding down.

She stops a few steps up, just out of his reach, and arches her eyebrows.

"Are you constipated?"

Gale's arm jerks, he jabs his finger in the direction of the television. "You recorded our screaming the other night." His face is darkening. "You made us yell on purpose so you could send the audio back to the Capitol."

Birdy's head tilts, her eyebrows scrunch together, as though she doesn't quite understand. When one of Prim's screams reaches her, she brightens.

"Oh, that." She nods. "Yeah, I did that." With another hop she jumps down the remaining steps, nearly knocks Gale over. "I was asked to get sample screams. More realistic feel to them than audio alterations. I'd planned on popping out of doors and hiding snakes in toilets, but you provided me with such a golden opportunity that I didn't have to."

Prim has started crying, wringing her hands at Katniss' distress on the television. She sinks to the floor in front of the television.

Vick takes Madge's hand, gives it a squeeze as he watches Gale teeter closer and closer to homicide.

Birdy's green eyes take in the room, hovering on each occupant. "By the way, I hope everyone in here likes snake fry, because I have several that I really don't have much use for now."

No one pays her much heed.

Once Katniss and Finnick escape the Jabberjays the two families leave.

Gale gives Birdy one last threatening glare before he goes.

"I hope you get what's coming to you someday," he tells her roughly.

Birdy simply smiles at him, "I hope you do too, Dorothy." Her features twist into a scowl, "And I hope it's every bit as bitter as mine."

She doesn't apologize, just turns the television down, goes to the kitchen, and makes herself a cup of coffee.

"The wranglers back home survive on this stuff," she says as she takes a drink. "My dad certainly did."

"That was cruel, you know?" Madge doesn't understand how she can be so cavalier about all of this.

"I know," Birdy says as she adds some sugar to her coffee. "I don't care, but I know." She sighs, "Madgie, there is still a Game on. I can't stop playing until the end."

#######

Madge, her parents, and Birdy stay up late watching the Games.

Birdy laughs, a mirthless, cold thing, when Peeta gives Katniss the locket.

"He would've been so good with us," she mumbles to herself.

When Katniss and Peeta start kissing Madge decides to go to bed.

She's relieved to find her room empty. No shadows from her window, no boys sitting beside her bed.

Her sleep is dreamless, but cut off by bright sunlight.

After washing up, brushing her teeth, and getting dressed, Madge slowly makes her way down the stairs. It's nearly midday.

When she enters the kitchen a pair of Peacekeepers, new ones, ones she has never seen before, are bidding her mother and Birdy goodbye.

Madge lets the backdoor close on them before she steps through the entryway from the hall.

"Who were they?" She asks. Peacekeepers aren't in the habit of making stops by her home. Or they hadn't.

"They were just bringing me a delivery," Birdy tells her.

"Since when are Peacekeepers your personal couriers?"

"Since always," Birdy smiles sadly. "I've have the gift of making friends with people that I shouldn't."

They finish off their lunch, check to make sure Katniss and Peeta are still alive, then head out. Birdy wants to see the fence for some unknown reason.

"Few of your pickaxes and this could be down in a minute or two," she says, eyeing the wire. "Anyone with any sense can see that, right?"

She's gnawing on her lip and Madge gets the impression she isn't asking a rhetorical question.

"Should you-"

"They got the bread from Three," Birdy cuts her off. "It's moving quick."

"I don't-"

"They'll be coming for me soon," Birdy begins rubbing her arms with her hands, as if she's cold. "They're gonna kill me, but I'm not gonna let them. I'm not gonna be part of the show."

Her head jerks, gesturing for Madge to follow her up the fence line.

"Mr. Haymitch has a drinking buddy," Birdy tells her. "We got him schematics of your fence here and asked him to give us the best way to get it down."

She pulls a roll of a shimmering florescent tape out, begins marking the poles.

"He told us that while it would be easiest to cut the wires, it would be quicker to push over the poles." She cuts off a piece of tape with her teeth, crosses it into an 'X', then puts it at the base of one of the support poles. "You tell that boy to have his buddies wear those helmets of theirs when they come out here. Use the lights on the tops and this tape will reflect back, tell them where to hit with their picks."

"What about the electricity?"

"Don't worry about that. It won't be an issue when the time comes. That's why they'll need lights."

She takes a short break, wipes a line of sweat from her forehead. Dropping to the ground, she starts picking at a few blades of grass, letting them catch in the wind and blow away.

"Now I'm going to tell you something, and you need to listen really closely to me, okay?"

Madge nods, drops to the ground facing her.

Birdy frowns at the ground in front of her, her eyebrows knit together and she sighs.

"When all this goes down, District Thirteen is going to come in and gather up whoever is left." Madge starts to interrupt, but Birdy holds up her hand. "You heard me right. Thirteen, bunch of dirty cowards. They've been hiding underground like a bunch of Mutt-prairie dogs. They've been hiding for decades while we suffered, and now, after we've done all the dangerous shit, they wanna sweep in and 'help'." She rolls her eyes. "I don't care what the others think. I don't trust them, and you shouldn't either." One of her unmanicured finger juts out, to the horizon. "When the time comes, you go with my boys, understand?"

It's all completely insane, but at the same time it makes perfect sense in the mad world Madge is increasingly living in.

"How soon?"

"Soon enough I want to get every pole marked as quickly as possible," Birdy answers as she pushes herself from the ground.

She holds out her hand for Madge, offering to help her up. Madge stare up at her.

"Why are you helping me?"

Birdy shrugs. "Why shouldn't I?"

"I'm serious." Madge gets to her feet. "Why?"

It takes her a minute to gather her thought, but she finally sighs. "You remind me of my siblings. In different ways." She makes a face. "And honestly, there aren't many people who like me."

Madge snorts.

"Shocking, I know," she chuckles. Her expression falls. "I haven't been able to save many people in my life. I want to save at least one."

#######

Madge, in an effort to feel useful, plays look-out, but no one comes.

It's late evening before they're done, though Madge gets the impression Birdy is stalling. She doesn't know why though. Madge can already imagine the Anthem about to be played and the dead of the day's pictures being prepared. She wonders, sadly, how many are dead now.

As they come up on Madge's house, only a few steps from the backdoor, Birdy stop and pulls out a piece of paper, among other things. It has several intricate looking drawings on it.

"Got this last night, came from Five." She rubs her eyes. "Give it to your dad."

"Why don't you?" She'll see him when he gets back from the Justice Building.

Birdy jerks her head, inclines her chin to the house, "I'm not gonna be seeing him."

Not understanding, Madge frowns, squints up at the backdoor. Just inside the window, she sees three white uniforms.

#######

Hesitantly, Madge and Birdy enter the backdoor, letting it gently click shut behind them.

"Miss Alameda, so good of you to join us," Thread gives her a cool smile.

"Well," she shrugs, "where else would I go?"

He ignores her question, makes a motion with his hands.

Madge gets pushed out of the way as a pair of Peacekeepers flank, Birdy.

"You were called, several times, Miss Alameda," Thread tells her. "Why didn't you answer?"

"Turned off my communicator," she tells him simply. "It kept alerting me when my friends were killed, live and in living color. Got a bit sick of it."

"Turning it off isn't part of your terms. Surely you remember that?" He narrows his eyes, daring her to feign ignorance.

Birdy's only response is an unconcerned shrug.

"You are being called back to the Capitol," Thread tells her, his cool smile widening. "Post haste."

Birdy's eyes roll, she lets out the sigh of someone long suffering in the presence of complete fools.

Before anyone can stop her she reaches up, puts something small and dark in her mouth.

Then she bites down.

It isn't until a little juice, so purple it's almost black, dribbles out the side of her mouth that Madge knows what she's done.

Thread realizes it too, lunges at her, knocking her to the ground, tries to get his fingers in her mouth, to pull the deadly berries out. It does him no good though, she's swallowed them already.

Jumping to his feet, Thread pulls out his gun, aims it at Birdy's head. "Spit it out girl!"

"Go ahead," she smirks. "I'm really scared."

He cocks his gun; Madge feels her mother's cool fingers gripping into the back of her dress at the metallic sounding click.

"I will kill you!"

Birdy shakes a little. It takes Madge a second to catch it, but she's laughing.

"Oh no! Not that!" Her breathing quickens. The pupils of her eyes seem to overtake the green of her irises. She gives Madge a small, purple stained smile, "His drugs work quickly."

Something like peace, or maybe just exhaustion from her life of constantly playing Games, comes over Birdy's features.

Despite Thread's threats, despite having made it this far in whatever Game she's been playing for so long, Birdy closes her eyes.

Madge imagines a canon firing for the last Tribute of a long ended Game.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Birdy's last words are from Romeo and Juliet. She just wanted to quote something classic in her final moment, and she's a bit dramatic.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine.
> 
> AN: Thanks to FortuneFaded2012 for beta'ing.

Thread tears Birdy's room apart after finding nothing in her pockets but more nightlock. He dumps both of her bags, uncovers nothing but dresses and undergarments, a few women's hygiene products that he hurls at the wall.

He moves through each room in the house, emptying drawers, pulling clothing from the closets, stripping the beds.

Madge isn't sure what he's looking for, in fact, she isn't even sure he knows what he's looking for. Even when he rips through her father's office, breaks every bottle of expensive liquor in his cabinet, growing more agitated with each fruitless search, he's directionless.

He finally rounds on Madge and her mother, both of which he'd forced to watch his quick destruction of their home.

"Where did she get the nightlock?" His eyes are bright and wild, but his voice is a rough whisper.

Backing up to her mother, shielding her from Thread's instability, Madge shakes her head, "I don't know."

"Don't lie to me, girl."

"I'm not lying," Madge tells him, her voice breaking despite her best efforts to keep it even.

Thread grabs her by the arm, yanks her from her mother's grasp. "Where did she get it?" When he huffs a rough breath in Madge's face he smells like the harsh detergent Mrs. Oberst uses on the rugs and mint. "Tell me."

She shakes her head again. He's squeezing her arm so tightly tears begin welling up in her eyes. "I don't know."

With a growl of frustration he pushes Madge away, sending her to the floor.

Madge feels her mother's cool fingers on her face. She's dropped down next to her and begun examining her for injuries.

Her surprisingly clear eyes turn up to Thread, narrow at him. "There's no nightlock in the District. Please leave my home."

A harsh, humorless laugh bursts out of Thread's mouth. His cold smile replaces the wild expression. "You think you have any authority here, Mrs. Undersee?"

It's abundantly clear she doesn't by the tone of Thread's voice.

He stares at the pair for a minute, the twisted cogs of his mind turning, and then he turns to the two Peacekeepers.

"Take the girl to get her father." He doesn't even spare a look at Madge and her mother. "He's the Mayor of this forsaken hellhole. He'll either know where the nightlock came from or he'll watch me rip his darling family apart."

Again, Thread grabs Madge, hauls her to her feet, and pulls her to within an inch of his face, "Be quick or your mother will miss you."

#######

When they get down the stairs Madge's stomach is in knots. She's positive her father has no more of an idea where the nightlock came from than Madge does. Her mind begins racing through all the possible outcomes, and none of them are good.

The male Peacekeeper picks up Birdy's body as he and the girl escort Madge to get her father.

The girl, whose skin is darker than anyone Madge has ever met, brushes Birdy's hair out of her face, takes a cloth from her pocket and wipes the purple juice from mouth. The boy's wide brown eyes droop, the deep color of his skin seems to drain of blood, pales unnaturally.

Madge frowns at the pair. Why are they being so careful with her?

For a second they seem frozen, just staring at the limp body of the former Victor. Then the girl wipes her cheek.

"Let's go. Not gonna make her any less dead looking at her," the girl sighs.

She motions for Madge to follow her, holds the door open and presses her finger to her lips, warning Madge to keep her questions to herself. At least for the time being.

Once they're outside, just outside the line of sight of Madge's home's windows, the girl, who is apparently in charge of whatever confusing thing is going on, stops them.

"Jessup, you take Birdy. We're not leaving her here." She presses her lips into a line, blinks a few times, then sighs. Her wide eyes, a soft golden color, turn to Madge. "You'll come with me. We need to get your daddy. This is going down tonight."

"What's going down?" Madge feels her heart pounding harder. "Who are you?"

The girl gives her a soft smile. "We're Birdy's friends. Or we were. We're the one's got her the nightlock. Brought it to her this morning." She sniffles. "She didn't want to go back. Said she was tired. Didn't want to have her last moments filmed for posterity."

The air seems heavier, it gets harder to breath.

It made sense. These were the Peacekeepers thathad been in her house just that morning, and out of all the people in the District, Peacekeepers could certainly leave the fence without drawing much attention. They could've easily snuck the berries in.

Madge can easily imagine Birdy not wanting to be another Capitol display. Her death, which seems like it would be inevitable given the circumstances, would be one more centerpiece to the Capitol's Game.

"We don't have time for you to ponder this over, hon." The girl finally says, an edge of irritation in her voice. "We need to get this District moving."

"When the time comes, you go with my boys, understand?"

Madge feels the anxiety creep further up her back. The end, whatever it is, is near.

#######

The boy, Jessup, runs off, carrying Birdy and telling the girl he'll be back with help as soon as he can.

"We would shoot off the flares but that would alert Thread," the girl tells Madge as they run to the Justice Building.

As they run, despite being breathless, Madge asks, "I didn't think District Ten supplied Peacekeepers."

The girl smiles, takes heavy breaths. "We don't. We killed a few of the newbies then had some friends in Three doctor up the paperwork. This is a long con, Madgie."

They jump up the step to the Justice Building, two, three at a time, burst through the heavy doors and into the main hall. Madge is in front, leading the girl down the hall to the end, where her father is working late again.

Madge slams into the door, her sore arm taking the brunt of the force, and grunts, turns the handle and pushes it open.

"Dad!"

He's not at his desk and Madge feels her stomach drop.

"Madge?" Her father comes from behind her, one of his heaviest paperweights hoisted high over his head. It drops to the ground with a thud and he grabs her, pulls her into a tight hug. He must finally notice the girl. "Who are you?"

"Katy-Jo Lewes," the girl finally introduces herself. She frowns, looks out the window. "We need to be quick, sir. Birdy's dead and Thread has your wife. I got that covered though."

The color drains from his face as he swallows thickly. "It's ending then."

"'Fraid so," Katy-Jo makes a face. "I hope you know how to get the power down."

His eyebrows knit together, "I was waiting on one last resort."

Madge remembers the paper, crumbled and sweaty in her pocket. Hand shaking, she pulls it out and passes it to her father. "I'm supposed to give this to you."

The room gets very quiet as he studies the intricate drawing, his eyes rapidly scanning over each piece of the puzzle. Finally, he sighs.

"No way around it then."

"No way around what?" Madge doesn't like his tone, the defeat in his eyes.

Her father takes her hand, kisses her knuckles. "No way around what I have to do."

"What do you have to do?" He's scaring her, more than she already had been.

A small smile, a hopeless one, forms on his worn face. "They have the main breaker for the electricity in the District fixed. We can't turn it off without triggering a defensive measure."

Madge feels her features fall. 'Defensive measures' sounds ominous.

He must read the worry in her eyes, because he answers the question before she can ask it, "The building, the one that houses the electrical circuits, is set to explode if it's tampered with."

Though he doesn't say it, Madge already knows her father is going to be 'tampering with' the electrical unit.

"That's why you've been studying electricity?" Tears start slipping down her cheeks. "You've known this whole time?"

"No," he shakes his head. "We kept looking for a way around it. There isn't though. This," he holds up the paper, "was the last hope."

Madge feels her body start to shake. Her father is going to die. He's had some vague idea that his death was a possibility for months, at least, and he'd kept that information from her. Not telling her mother Madge understands, but Madge's father has always confided in her. It burns cold in her chest, even if she understands it. He's saved her from the burden of knowing what terrible things were coming.

He was shielding her. The last time he'd ever be able to do so.

"Daddy, no," she whispers. Her knees buckle under her and she falls into him. His arms, the same ones that had rocked her to sleep when she was little, picked her up when she fell, gave her hugs when she'd had a bad day at school, were giving her one last comfort before vanishing from her life entirely.

"I have to, Pearl."

She knows he does. He's drilled it into her for a lifetime. Help others before yourself.

This is the ultimate sacrifice. The final one for the District he's been trying to save Madge's entire life. A part of Madge suddenly hates everyone her father is about to save. They've never cared about all the hardships her family has endured to keep them even minimally comfortable, and they'll never know that her father gave his life for their chance at safety.

She feels him shift, look up at Katy-Jo. "You'll take care of her?"

"Like she's my own sister."

#######

Madge stays wrapped in the comfort of her father's arms as they make their way out of the building and down the back steps.

For the last time, Madge's father presses a kiss to her forehead, gives her one last hug.

"Be good. Stay safe." He cups her cheek. "I love you."

Then he's gone.

Though she wants to do nothing more than stare at the empty space he's left, remember his words on an endless loop in her mind until the end comes, Katy-Jo has other plans.

"I'm sorry, but we gotta go." She casts a sharp look toward the horizon. "We gotta get your momma then get as many of these fools outta here as we can."

Wiping her eyes, Madge nods. Her father is counting on her. She has to get the people up, out of their houses and to the fence. She has to save her mother.

They run, Madge several yards ahead of the other girl, to the house.

"Hold up, Madgie." Katy-Jo says harshly, catching Madge by the back of her blouse. "I'm the one with the gun, remember?"

They creep up the steps, Katy-Jo in front, her gun, a sidearm, up and ready to shoot Thread.

The house is dark; Thread must've turned the lights off.

Uncertain where Madge's mother and he are, Katy-Jo Lewes quietly opens the door, keeping Madge an arm's length behind her. Then she stops and stands up straight, a puzzled look on her face.

"What the hell happened here?"

Cold terror floods Madge's veins and she pushes past her self-appointed protector. She stops dead in her tracks.

Thread is on the sofa, pale and slumped over, unmoving. Madge's mother is in her favorite chair, a cup and saucer in her hands, daintily sipping tea. It's not a scene Madge had ever expected to walk in -Jo, looking more than a little confused, walks around the couch, checks Thread's pulse. He doesn't have one.

"Mom." Madge runs across the room, grabs her mother in a tight hug, knocking her tea to the ground. "What happened?"

Her mother sighs, tilts herhead and gives Thread's dead body a vague look. "He threatened to do terrible things to you, love. So I made him tea." She gives Katy-Jo an airy smile. "I put some of your berries in his drink, dear."

Madge's heart, which had been beating faster than she'd ever felt, came to a sudden stop.

Her mother, her loopy mother, had killed Romulus Thread. He probably hadn't thought she was any kind of threat. She'd used his lack of perceiving her as a possible danger to poison him.

Grabbing her hand, Madge tries to pull her mother from the chair. "We need to go, mom."

She doesn't budge though.

"I can't, love."

"Yes, you can. Come on." Madge gives her another tug.

Then she notices it. Blood on both their hands.

Her mother takes her pale, cool hand back, looks at the blood, black in the moonlight and sighs.

"He was so angry when he realized what I'd done. Pulled out his gun."

She gestures to her stomach. There's a patch of black, wet and sticky, on her white gown.

"Oh, mom." Madge feels bile rise in her throat, burn as she swallows it back down. She turns to Katy-Jo. "Help me get her up."

When she doesn't come, Madge turns again, tears rolling down her face, "Please!"

"She'll be too slow," Katy-Jo says. She puts a hand on Madge's shoulder. "We move her too much and she'll bleed to death."

"I'm not leaving her!"

Katy-Jo's golden eyes widen, jump between Madge and her mother. She nods.

"Okay, let's get things moving then come back for her."

Madge feels pressure on her fingers and turns. Her mother gives her a weak smile.

"I've not always been a very good mother, but you've always been such a good daughter." She presses Madge's blood soaked fingers to her cheek. "I'm so proud of you."

She knows what she has to do, but Madge can feel her heart falling to pieces at the thought of leaving her mother.

"Mrs. Oberst is coming to keep me company," her mother tells her. "I won't be alone."

It's cold comfort, knowing their hateful old housekeeper is getting up to come sit with her dying mother, but Madge understands. It's permission to do what needs to be done.

Leave.

Quickly, tears falling hard and fast down her cheeks, Madge leans in and presses a kiss to her mother's forehead. "I love you."

"I love you too."

#######

Madge is still crying, heaving in sobs, when she follows Katy-Jo out the door.

"I'm sorry."

Madge forcefully swats the tears off her face only to have them replaced by more as she nods.

Taking a few deep breaths, she finally settles herself enough to speak. "We need to get to the foreman's office."

Katy-Jo frowns. "Why?"

"There's an alarm, a siren, for when there's a mine collapse," Madge tells her as she starts to run.

"Like a tornado siren?" Katy-Jo asks, already half out of breath.

Madge doesn't know what a tornado siren is, but nods anyway.

She focuses on the burn of the air in her lungs, the pain in her legs and in the arm Thread had grabbed her by. Anything but her parents' impending deaths.

I just have to get the warning out.She tells herself. Then maybe she can get back to her mother. She isn't a lost cause yet.

The office is easy to get to, is just off the way from the path to the Seam.

Katy-Jo breaks in the door and Madge runs in. She knocks several piles of papers over, and few knick-knacks fall to the floor in her hurry to get to the alarm button.

The moment her hand hits it a high noise fills the air. It screams out that a disaster has just occurred. Only Madge and the fake Peacekeeper know different. Madge doesn't stop for long, she can't. She runs back out the door, past Katy-Jo, back on her frantic path to the Seam.

"You tell that boy to have his buddies wear those helmets of theirs when they come out here."

Gale is who she needs. He's the one people will follow, trust, she knows it. That's what Birdy had meant. Time starts to slip by, faster and faster. The burn of her run starts to overwhelm Madge, but she doesn't stop.

When she takes the turn to the row of houses where Gale lives she starts screaming his name.

"GALE!"

People are already out of their houses, confused by the alarm in the middle of the night. Madge dodges and weaves between the people who increasingly congest her path.

"GALE!"

He's out, still in his mining uniform, apparently having started watching the Games and not changed yet. His eyes widen at her wild state, dirty and with blood on her hands. Her panic is overwhelming her so much that she barely registers the people blocking her way.

"GALE!"

He catches her before her legs carry her past him, keeps her from sliding to the ground with her abrupt stop, his hands gripping her arms.

"What happened to you?" He grabs her hands, studying the sticky blood on them.

"They're coming, Gale! We have to get everyone out!"

His head shakes, "What are you talking about?"

"They're-"

A loud, deafening bang interrupts the siren. Madge turns and sees a flash of light in the distance. Then the lights go out.

Her heart stops. Her father is dead.

"Gale!" Rory bounds out of the house. "Katniss shot the top of the arena and then the lights went out!"

The rest of the Hawthornes appear, in the doorway. Vick pales when he sees Madge.

"Your hands-"

She holds up her hand, shakes her head. She's wasted too much time. She can't answer his questions.

"Gale, get your friends, tell them to use their headlamps. We marked the poles, use your picks, hit them at the bases, where the reflective tape is. They should come down."

"Wh-"

"Just do it!" She snaps.

He stares at her, like he's seeing her for the first time. Then he nods.

Katy-Jo comes bounding up and Gale tenses, reaches for Madge, but she shakes her head.

"Bad news. Thread must've known we were up to something. Probably what he was looking for. He told all the Town folks to get in their cellars if the lights went out." She's barely caught her breath from running. "I got some of the other's trying to get them out, but they're having to break into all the shops to get to them."

Madge nods, swallows more bile down. She turns back to Gale, willing him to be brave as she knows he is. Her damp fingers take his hand, give it a squeeze. This is the last contact she's ever going to have with him, she knows it.

If she were brave, she would hug him, throw her arms around him and give him a goodbye kiss.

A last kiss, she's certain of it.

She doesn't though. It isn't in her to do it.

"Be safe Gale."

She turns and runs, back toward the town, leaving Katy-Jo yelling after her. Her mother might still have some hope.

#######

There are a dozen Peacekeepers, Katy-Jo's friends, breaking in doors and windows, yelling for people to get out.

Madge doesn't see many in the street.

Delly Cartwright is one of the few. She runs headlong into Madge when they take a corner.

"Delly!"

"Oh, Madge! The Peacekeepers came and told us the District is about to be bombed!" She looks around fretfully. "My parents are trying to help get people out of the cellars, but they told me to get to the fence."

Madge nods, "Go. Get to the fence. It's the safest place. Get out of the District."

She doesn't elaborate, just runs past the still blubbering and confused Delly.

Just as she's crossing the square, it's littered with debris, glass and wood from the fake Peacekeepers efforts to get people out of their cellars, when the air gets still.

It's a peculiar kind of heat that the Capitol's hovercrafts give off, dry and harsh. Madge looks up, just barely able to make out the dark outline of the first of what she's certain are many, as it glides, soundlessly over her.

She tracks it, follows it with her eyes, nearly tripping as she does so. It comes to a stop, a lazy pause in the sky.

Then the bombs start to fall.

Heat, worse than a thousand summer days, more overwhelming than the kitchen when Mrs. Oberst cooks in the dog days, comes up in a wave as the first bomb hits.

They don't make a sound as they fall, just drop from the hovercrafts and explode in white hot light when they hit their mark.

Madge is knocked off her feet by the force of the blast that destroys the Justice Building. Eyes burning, she squints into the brilliant flames, watches her father's second home crumble in on itself.

Mom.

Struggling to her feet, Madge tries to run, but her legs finally give out. The ground is on fire, hot as a skillet fresh from the stove. The world around her burns, but Madge crawls.

She makes it to the end of the road leading to her house when another silent hovercraft glides to a stop over her home. It explodes, bursts into arches of fire and heat, just like the rest of the District.

And she's alone.

Her tears have dried up in the heat, the hot wind whips the last of them from her face. Madge feels her insides burning, the swelter is going to incinerate her from the inside out, and she doesn't care.

"Madge Undersee?" Someone yells over the cracking of the wood and the explosions.

Madge doesn't turn.

Something large comes up beside her, clomps debris up into the air around her.

"Magdalene Undersee?" They ask again.

Madge finally turns her swollen eyes upward, to a dark skinned man on horseback. He holds a hand out to her. "Come on, dear. We gotta make a quick exit."

She doesn't want to leave. She wants to sit where she is and burn.

Her mother and father's 'I love you' drift through her mind. Mr. Abernathy's insistence that she stay alive. Birdy's desire to save at least oneperson.

She owes it to them not to give up.

Her hand reaches up, takes the older man's work worn hand, and he pulls her up with ease, practically tossing her onto the back of his restless horse.

"Hold on!"

They take off; the searing wind cuts at her raw skin as they ride through the blazing remains of the Town. Behind them, Madge can hear more explosions.

I hope Gale got enough out.

Heat and exhaustion start to take their toll and that's her last thought before her world goes dark.

#######

It takes several days of hard riding before they reach District Ten.

It's flat, an expanse of endless grass as far as Madge can see from her spot behind Katy-Jo, who insists on being called by her whole name.

"There are a dozen 'Katy-Jo's'," she tells Madge after she's helped her tend to the raw burns on her arms, legs, and face. "But there's only one 'Katy-Jo Lewes'."

That, Madge decides, after several days of riding in a rickety wagon beside her, is probably for the best. Katy-Jo Lewes, though nice, is just as crazy as her former best friend.

Jefferson, the wiry haired man that had ridden into the fires to rescue Madge, keeps an eye on her. He's quiet, but firm, the leader of the young group.

"They started burning the fields," he tells Madge when they spot black smoke filling the sky ahead of them and filling Madge with anxiety. "Trying to make a smoke screen. Obscure the hovercraft operators' views."

Madge just nods, her throat is still raw from the heat, making talking painful.

Her still sore and swollen eyes take in the empty frontier. She's in the center of nothingness, and it makes her chest ache at the unfamiliarity.

Madge doesn't like the sensation of being lost. She isn't adventurous.

But there's no option this time, no going back. She's fallen down a rabbit hole and through a looking glass, into a strange new land, a strange new life. She's riding along on a path every bit as foreign as the one she'd started on when she went into the Seam just over a year ago.

All she can do is hope this path leads her to a less dangerous place than the last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: And that's it! This story is done. Madge and Gale's story picks up again in 'Possibilities of a Life', which is just the mishmash of one-shots that encompass the times from when they're both children to when they have children. Eventually I'll get that one posted over here too. Thanks for reading!


End file.
